Poland – Poland wants to help refugees near their home and refuse mandatory immigration, by Olivier Bault.
The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski said that no country can be forced to welcome immigrants on its territory and the migration crisis concerns only countries that open their borders to immigration. The real crisis is the crisis of refugees in war zones such as Syria and Libya, and that is where Poland wishes to participate in helping refugees.
The Minister criticizes European commissioners for their proposals made without prior consultation with the EU Member States as they have no democratic legitimacy. About the will to redistribute hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Europe, Waszczykowski told on May 7 to the Polish private news channel TVN24: “70 years after the World war II, someone in this supposedly civilized and progressive part of Europe, proposes mass deportations to countries where refugees do not want to go.”
The unrealistic aspect of the European Commission’s proposals has once again been highlighted with the announcement by Poland on Monday, May 9, of the cancellation at the initiative of the Italian and Greek authorities of the first transfer of 100 asylum applicants of the nearly 7,000 the previous Polish government promised to take in at the EU summit last September. Italians and Greeks were not able to provide sufficient information on the identity of the 100 illegal immigrants who were to be transferred and refused to Polish liaison officers in Italy and Greece the possibility to meet these people, preferring to withdraw their transfer requests.
This was the first group of illegal immigrants who were to be transferred to Poland as part of the agreed quotas until September, affecting 160 000 “migrants”.
Meanwhile, Poland has announced the start in the coming weeks of an assistance program for Syrian refugees in camps in Lebanon, in which she will finance the accommodation and food for between 6,000 and 10,000 people.
Coincidence? We learned on May 11 that the Polish Ministry of the Interior had decided to cancel a competition for projects funded by the EU in the field of integration, of legal immigration and asylum on the grounds that the criteria of this contest favored too much non-European immigration. European subsidies involved are from the Migration Integration Asylum Fund (FAMI) active in all EU countries.
Translated from French by the Visegrád Post.
