Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, on Thursday, August 17th, passed a law allowing for a nationwide referendum to be held on October 15th, the same day as parliamentary elections.
Among other topics, Poles will be asked to voice their opinion on the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme.
The new law was passed by 234 votes to 210, with seven abstentions.
Opposition parties are boycotting the referendum, which they claim is a misuse of public funds as well as an attempt by the ruling conservative party PiS (Law and Justice) to drum up support from voters at the ballot box.
As part of the referendum, people will be asked four questions.
Besides the question “Do you support the acceptance of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the compulsory relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?” other questions deal with the privatization of public companies, the raising of the retirement age and whether the fence on the border with Belarus should be removed.
Under the EU’s proposed migrant quotas edict, strongly opposed by the PiS, countries refusing to play by Brussels’ rules will have to put a sum of money on the table for each migrant refused.
European member states still have to negotiate the agreement in the European Parliament, a process in which the Polish referendum holds no legal power.
“The questions asked there are crucial for the security of our compatriots and our country,” government spokesman Piotr Muller (PiS) said during a debate in the Sejm:
We will not allow illegal immigrants to be forced in, we do not agree to the sale of our national assets, we are against raising the retirement age and the liquidation of the barrier on the Polish-Belarusian border. We want to hear the voice of Poles.
Borys Budka, a lawmaker from the main opposition party, the center-right Civic Platform (PO), said the vote was not a referendum but rather “an attempt to circumvent all regulations regarding the financing of the election campaign.”
On multiple occasions, the PiS has accused Civic Platform of being subservient to foreign interests, particularly those of Germany, claiming it would sell off Polish state assets to German companies.
The PO argues that the PiS-led government has itself sold off such assets below their value.
According to the latest polls, together with its coalition partners, PiS is set to remain Poland’s largest party with 39% of the vote, comfortably ahead of its main rival, former Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s center-right Civic Platform (PO), which would manage to secure 29%.
