Poland won’t accept refugees after Paris attacks: incoming minister
Poland will not take in refugees under a
hotly contested EU programme to
distribute them among member states
because of the Paris attacks, the
country’s incoming European affairs
minister said on Saturday.
“The European Council’s decisions,
which we criticised, on the relocation of
refugees and immigrants to all EU
countries are part of European law,”
Konrad Szymanski wrote on right-
leaning website wPolityce.pl.
But “after the tragic events of Paris we
do not see the political possibility of
respecting them,” he said.
“Poland must retain complete control of
its borders, as well as its asylum and
migration policy,” Szymanski insisted.
Szymanski, who is to take the European
affairs portfolio in conservative Prime
Minister-designate Beata Szydlo’s new
government, said Friday’s attacks in
Paris were “directly” connected both to
the migrant crisis as well as French
involvement in air strikes on Islamic
State positions.
He said Warsaw wanted to see the
“revisiting of European policy in
response to the migration crisis.”
Incoming foreign minister Witold
Waszczykowski added his voice to Polish
concerns, saying Europe needed to
“approach in a different fashion the
Muslim community living in Europe
which hates this continent and wishes to
destroy it.”
PAP news agency quoted Waszczykowski
as criticising the European Union’s
attempts to open its door to migrants
fleeing the conflict in Syria as “a cul de
sac.”
Szydlo’s eurosceptic Law and Justice
(PiS) party won the October 25 election
on a platform that included refusing
migrants entry into Poland.
Under the EU relocation plan, 160,000
refugees registered in frontline states
Greece and Italy are to be relocated
around the 28-member bloc.
Many eastern European countries have
staunchly resisted taking a share of the
burden.
Speaking to reporters as he laid a wreath
outside the French embassy in Warsaw
for the Paris victims, Szymanski said
Poland would only take in immigrants
“if we have security guarantees.”
Poland, a country of 38 million, has to
date taken in some 200 Syrian Christian
migrants under the auspices of a private
foundation.
The outgoing liberal government had
declared readiness to take in more
migrants than the 9,287 assigned to it
under EU proposals without saying how
far it would go beyond that figure.
PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski has
repeatedly voiced opposition to Poland
taking in migrants, instead proposing
financial aid for the countries they first
reach.
Last month, Kaczynski warned migrants
could spread diseases such as cholera,
dysentery and “all sorts of parasites”
which could “endanger local
populations”.
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