Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced their joint position on the EU’s proposed migration and asylum reform, reiterating their strong opposition to the proposed relocation scheme ahead of the upcoming informal summit of bloc leaders in Granada.
Like Hungary, Poland has been fiercely opposed to the mandatory solidarity rule proposed by the European Commission and approved by the Council in July.
“Our position on forced relocation is uniform and unchanged,” Duda said at a joint conference with Morawiecki, as quoted by the president’s office.
The Polish government will “present a tough veto against illegal immigration at the European Council”, the prime minister announced.
While Morawiecki is heading to Spain for a European Council meeting, Duda will participate in the summit of the Arraiolos Group countries in Porto, Portugal. The migration package is to be discussed at both these meetings, according to the president.
EU migration reform has become a key topic for discussion in Poland’s ongoing election campaign, with the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party accusing their political opponents, mainly Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), of wanting to take in thousands of irregular Muslim migrants under EU pressure.
PiS often recalls the migration crisis of 2015, when the then-PO government accepted the established quota of migrants as part of the European Union’s relocation scheme.
When PiS came to power in 2015 and its candidate, Duda, won the presidential election later that year, Poland’s position changed decisively, Duda noted, adding that it had always been strongly opposed to the quota system and what he calls the forced relocation of migrants.
“Poland fulfils its obligation to protect state borders and external borders of the EU,” Duda said, referring to the more recent crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, where Poland built a barrier to prevent thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa from entering the country.
“For the Commission, borders are obsolete”
Meanwhile, Duda and Morawiecki appealed to Poles to participate in the national referendum, which will be held at the same time as the parliamentary elections on 15 October.
“Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?” reads one of the referendum questions. This and the remaining questions have been criticised by numerous commentators as purportedly aimed at PO and Donald Tusk.
“We are at a turning point in how Polish sovereignty and borders will be treated. For PO and the European Commission, borders are obsolete,” Morawiecki said at the conference.
He stressed that the government will never agree to the demands of Berlin and Brussels, adding that “we do not want another Lampedusa in Poland”.
Contrary to what PiS says, relocation is not compulsory in the EU’s new migration scheme. The rule of obligatory solidarity means that a country that does not want to take in asylum seekers can contribute financially or operationally to the bloc’s migration management.
Still, the Polish government believes that the obligation to pay money for each unaccepted migrant is a form of punishment for the refusal to participate in the relocation effort.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)
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