Poland defends EU refugee decision

The Polish government has defended its decision to agree to EU migrant relocations despite tricky domestic politics.

Piotr Stachanczyk, its state secretary for immigration, told press in Brussels on Tuesday (22 September), that Warsaw had a bigger say in talks on the scheme because it abandoned the No camp, containing the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia.

“We couldn’t have blocked the Council decision [vote] even if we were four [countries]. We could have said No and had no say in the negotiations, or we could have done what we did”.

He said one of its red lines was to cut a European Commission “key” - on how to redistribute migrants based on population size and wealth - from the EU legal text.

“Member states have agreed to the figures, but excluded from the decision any system of counting which could, in future, be used as a precedent for further quotas. There’s no such mechanism. There’s just the naked figures that we agreed to”, he explained.

He said the agreed system means that if Ukrainian refugees begin to arrive en masse in Poland, then Poland will “almost automatically” stop taking people from Greece and Italy.

He noted the EU decision allows Poland to express a preference for the kind of refugees it takes, in a nod to Polish preferences for Christians instead of Muslims.

“It says member states can indicate which groups of foreigners will best integrate in … Poland”, he said.

He also described Tuesday’s deal as a trade-off on national security.

He said the system will only be implemented if Greece and Italy seal borders and properly register migrants.

He noted the “real danger” is not relocating120,000 refugees, but having two “holes” in EU borders - Greece and Italy - where “3,000 to 5,000 people a day enter the EU and disappear somewhere”.

He also said only refugees which have been properly vetted “not just by our security services, but jointly by the services of all member states” will be allowed in.

The Polish official downplayed the numbers Poland will take.

He said the initial figure will be 4,600 to 4,800 people, based on the 66,000 allocation for Greece and Italy.

But he added it'll take a separate Council decision, “perhaps one year or so from now”, to relocate a second batch of 54,000.

“This [4,600 to 4,800] is a number which our immigration centres can definitely cope with”, he said.

With Polish elections on 25 October, he added there’ll be no new arrivals in Poland any time soon because Greece and Italy must overhaul border security and build new reception centres before anyone is sent anywhere.

Speaking to press in Warsaw, Polish EU affairs minister Rafał Trzaskowski i also underlined that Tuesday’s decision dropped the Commission “algorithm” and, with it, any “automatism” on future relocations.

The Polish opposition is yet to speak out.

But for his part, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the right-wing Law and Justice opposition party, said earlier this month if Poland takes in too many people “we will no longer be masters in our own country”.

He claimed migrants will try to impose Muslim law in Poland and could be potential terrorists.

He also accused the PM of violating the Polish constitution.

“Does the government have the right, acting under external [EU] pressure, without the accord of the nation, to take decisions, which, in all probability, will have a negative effect on our daily lives … and, ultimately, on our security?”, he noted.

According to recent polls, by Ipsos for Polish public TV on 13 September, Law and Justice is ahead on 35 points compared to 24 for the ruling centre-right Civic Platform.