Poland says Europe will become ‘Lampedusa’, slams EU relocation scheme

The Polish government has adopted a special resolution on EU migration and asylum reform, condemning the bloc’s relocation system in light of the drastic increase in migrant arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Lampedusa is struggling to cope with the sharp increase in arrivals, with about 8,500 migrants arriving over three days, nearly as much as the island’s population.

The government “adopted a resolution that refers to […] the situation on Lampedusa, but Lampedusa is just a symbol of the situation that threatens the whole Europe, including Poland,” Deputy Prime Minister and head of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, said on Tuesday, as quoted by RMF FM private radio.

Poland and Hungary were the loudest critics of the EU’s new mandatory solidarity-based migration management scheme when the Council approved it in June.

Under this system, each EU member state can choose whether to participate in relocations or make a financial or operational contribution.

But the option of a financial contribution has not gone well with Poland, with the government calling it a punishment for refusing to take in migrants earlier this year.

Besides, Warsaw believes it has already done its fair share in managing migration to the EU by taking in over a million war refugees from Ukraine.

In the new resolution, the government completely rejects relocation. In a document which is to be sent to the European Commission, Poland would insist on cancelling the resignation from the 2018 compromise, giving up mandatory relocation, according to Kaczyński.

The only method to fight the migrants’ “incursion” is strengthening the EU’s external borders and repatriation of those who reached the bloc, “alternatively some other solution, but in any case related to removing those people from the EU’s territory,” Kaczyński said.

By adopting the resolution, the government gives “a clear message” to the European Commission, but also to the opposition Civic Platform (PO) party, headed by Donald Tusk, that the ruling camp does not agree with irregular migration, said Morawiecki.

In his view, Lampedusa should be a wake-up call for the EU.

“The whole Europe, the whole EU, may become Lampedusa if we continue to commit the same old mistakes, the scheme and mechanisms that the Commission proposed,” Morawiecki warned.

Irregular migration is one of the key issues in the run-up to the October elections, which will be accompanied by a referendum on the EU’s proposed migration and asylum system. It will ask voters whether they “support accepting thousands of irregular migrants from the Middle East and Africa in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by European bureaucrats”.

In the first half of the year, both the Commission and the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU repeatedly stressed that relocation was not compulsory under the new scheme and that countries could instead choose other ways of contributing to managing the migration burden.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)