Context: Due to the war in the Middle East, gas and fuel prices worldwide have increased. In Europe, the price of natural gas has risen from €30 to €50 per megawatt hour. However, it is still far from the highs seen at the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, when the price reached €350. Across the EU, motor fuel prices rose by an average of 25%, with the most significant increases occurring in Germany and Austria. Against this backdrop, the European Union has once again begun discussing fuel tourism. Residents of border regions often travel to neighboring countries with lower fuel prices. The Dutch go to Belgium, the Germans go to Poland and Austria, and the Poles go to Slovakia.
Marina Subbota, the host of the YouTube channel for the regional newspaper Minskaya Pravda, discussed the rise in fuel prices in Europe and said that Poland had allegedly banned the sale of fuel to foreigners.
“[Polish President Karol] Nawrocki and his team lobbied to ban Germans from filling up at Polish gas stations. Incidentally, this also applied to all other Europeans who are not Polish. <...> It was immediately decided to limit the amount of fuel sold to Germans and other foreign visitors, at the same gas station. Now, the honorable burghers must scour all the gas stations in the Polish border region to save money. Some stations will sell them ten liters, and others will sell them one,” said the host of the A my govorili project on March 20, 2026.
This is far from reality. Nawrocki did not restrict the sale of fuel to foreigners, who are still free to purchase it at Polish gas stations. The mayor of Swinoujscie, a border resort town, was the only one to impose restrictions in March 2026. It is only five kilometers from the nearest German town, and the residents of the German borderland bought almost all the fuel there on the first weekend of March. Some gas stations were forced to suspend operations.
Following this, the mayor of Świnoujście asked gas station owners to limit sales of fuel in jerry cans to no more than 20 liters per customer. This is the maximum amount that a foreigner can carry across the border duty-free. There were no restrictions on refueling car tanks.
No other such restrictions are known to exist in Poland. Therefore, the allegation that the country banned the sale of fuel to non-Poles is false.
The host of A my govorili probably confused the situation in Poland with the decision taken in Slovakia, a country that is friendly to Belarus. Authorities imposed restrictions on fuel sales there, affecting both foreigners and their own citizens. They allowed one car to buy no more than €400 worth of diesel and no more than 10 liters in jerry cans, and decided to set higher prices for foreigners.
Prime Minister Robert Fico attributed these measures to the oil sector emergency caused by issues with Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline. Russian strikes damaged it in Ukraine in January. The Slovakian side said the delay in restoring supplies was due to more than just repairs.
In other words, Minskaya Pravda misrepresented a local measure from one Polish city as a nationwide ban on foreigners. In reality, Poland has not made such a decision, so foreign drivers can still refuel their cars freely there.