Poland will not take in refugees under a hotly contested EU program to distribute them among member states because of the Paris attacks, the country’s incoming European affairs minister says. 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”.
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Poland joins a quartet of EU members that have defied Brussels’ plan to redistribute the inflow of asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa among members of the union.
Under the EU relocation plan, 160,000 refugees registered in the frontline states of Greece and Italy were to be relocated around the 28-member bloc but there has been fierce resistance from several eastern European countries.
“However in the face of the tragic events in Paris, we see no political possibility of implementing them”, he wrote on the site.
Syzmanski is taking on the European affairs brief in Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, which formed a new government after winning the country’s general election in October.
The refugee crisis was a key issue in the election campaign, with PiS strongly critical of the government’s decision.
In light of the Paris terror attacks, Poland can not go ahead with European Union decisions on immigration and accept refugees without guarantees of security.
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Poland’s incoming Prime Minister Beata Szydlo lit a candle at the French Institute in the southern city of Kracow. At a briefing she refused to comment on the migrant issue, adding that she and her government will do everything “for the Polish nation to feel safe”.
