Poland cranks up quarrel with Europe after plan to impose £17,000 fee for each refugee a country fails to host
BRUSSELS – Poland’s government is cranking up its quarrels with the rest of the European Union as it threatens a referendum on whether to accept the bloc’s recent deal on how to spread the responsibility for dealing with migrants and refugees.
Poland and Hungary were outvoted by the rest of the EU earlier this month on a plan to set migrant quotas for each country, with fees of €20,000 (£17,000) for each refugee that national governments refuse to host. Polish MPs in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, responded last week by voting against the deal, and now the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has said it will not pay the fees – and put it to a vote.
“We will not agree to it, neither does the Polish nation,” said PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is seen as the de facto head of the government. “This issue must be the subject of a referendum and we will organise this referendum. Poles must speak out on this matter.”
Mr Kaczynski’s claim that the measures undermined national security was challenged by left-wing MP Maciej Gdula, who asked if that was the case, why only two EU member states voted against it. He said the government was trying to “scare the people” with the supposed threat of foreigners ahead of scheduled national elections in October, which polls suggest will be tight.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also warned that allowing in migrants and refugees from outside Europe would threaten Poles’ safety, claiming citizens in other EU countries were living in fear. “In many of these cities, the beautiful cities of Paris, Marseille or Rome, we are dealing with districts of terror; tyres are on fire, cars are on fire, women are afraid to go out for a walk in the evening,” he said.
Warsaw says it has already taken in well over a million people fleeing the war in Ukraine, far more than any other EU member state.
However, even before the war in Ukraine, the PiS-led government had railed against migrants and refugees from war zones in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, saying they would not be able to integrate into a Christian and conservative country like Poland. This hardline stance has long been condemned by human rights groups, who say it reeks of xenophobia, as most refugees have come from majority Muslim countries.
It is part of a growing number of battles that the Polish government is fighting with the rest of the EU. “Asking a question on migration in a referendum is a stupid idea,” says Camino Mortera-Martinez, head of the Brussels office of the Centre For European Reform (CER). “It’s not going to solve any problem for anybody. They’re trying to play the blame game against Brussels.”
Earlier this month, the European Commission said it would launch a legal challenge to a controversial new law that allows PiS to probe opposition leader Donald Tusk ahead of the October elections. The law, also condemned by the US State Department, helped fuel the country’s biggest anti-government protest since the fall of communism, and recent polls show the country’s opposition party gaining momentum.
At the same time, government reforms to Poland’s judicial system have been condemned for undermining the independence of judges, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). These controversial judicial reforms are also the reason why the Commission has not unlocked billions of euros of long-disputed EU funds earmarked for Poland – a cost that could add up to more than €75bn in funding if Warsaw fails to amend the law.
Poland’s battles are not just with the EU institutions: last year, the government demanded up to €1.3trn in war reparations from Germany for the damage caused during its brutal occupation between 1939 and 1945 – an issue that Berlin insists was legally settled decades ago.
