The Polish government’s position on asylum rights has been heard and understood by EU countries, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said after what he described as fruitful talks on migration at the European Council summit on Thursday.
Tusk’s new migration strategy, approved by the Polish government on Tuesday, has caused a rift within the ruling coalition, mainly over plans to interfere with asylum rights. At the European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday, heads of state and government discussed the increased migration pressure as well as measures to strengthen migration policies at the national level.
“I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve on migration; first of all, understanding,” said Tusk (PO, EPP) about the summit.
He also insisted that he was not going to suspend migration rights, as was initially reported by most media, but to temporarily suspend the processing of asylum seekers’ applications in places where the border is usually crossed illegally.
None of the EU member states opposed such a solution, Tusk said, explaining that this was because everyone knew that foreign regimes, including the Belarusian and Russian regimes, were involved in human trafficking.
“I must say that it went easier than I expected,” he said, admitting he expected more vigorous opposition.
Tusk’s new strategy states that if the country is at risk of destabilisation due to migration pressure, it can temporarily and territorially suspend the right to receive asylum applications.
The strategy also addresses issues such as access to the labour market, educational migration, integration, citizenship and repatriation, or contact with the diaspora.
Poland has been facing a surge in migration since mid-2021, with hundreds of people attempting to cross its border with Belarus. Both the previous conservative PiS (ECR) government and the current pro-EU cabinet of Donald Tusk (EPP/S&D/Renew) accused Minsk and Moscow of orchestrating the crisis.
Thinking outside the box
Speaking to the media, other EU leaders expressed their understanding of Poland’s migration challenges and supported Tusk’s position.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof stressed that the difficulties facing Poland were not a “common migration problem” but the result of a hybrid war being waged by Russia and Belarus.
While he did not expect any concrete results on the issue during the ongoing summit, he admitted that there was a “different feeling” among EU leaders on the migration issue than before.
Tusk said on Saturday that he did not intend to abide by the EU’s migration and asylum pact, adopted earlier this year, and that “nobody will force him” to do so.
His Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo, considered that the pact did not solve the problem of returns. Therefore, he welcomed a discussion on the “external dimension of migration.”
“ We need to think outside the box,” he stressed.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)
Source: euractiv.com
