Warsaw is considering holding a referendum on compliance with the EU’s migrant redistribution scheme on the day of the general elections this autumn, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party announced on Monday, June 19th. Now diplomats in Brussels are concerned that such a vote could eventually trigger a Brexit-like movement in Poland, Mandiner reported on Tuesday.
The idea of putting the EU’s new Migration Pact to a referendum was first proposed by PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the Polish parliament last week, arguing that his country has already taken in up to 2 million Ukrainian refugees, adding it would be unfair to force it to take more migrants or pay up instead.
Since the decision was made without the unanimous consent of EU member states, the pact violates the principle of sovereignty of those who voted against it. “This issue must be the subject of a referendum,” Kaczynski said, “Poles must speak out on the matter.”
Poland and other Visegrad countries have always been at the forefront of opposing different forms of the mandatory relocation scheme that the EU introduced during the height of the 2015 migration crisis, which was gradually abandoned due to Central Europe’s consistent rejection.
Now, the new version of the quota system—called ‘compulsory solidarity’—was adopted by the EU’s interior ministers earlier this month and is awaiting final approval in the European Council. If signed into law, the plan would force EU members to choose between accepting a certain number of asylum seekers every year or paying €20,000 for each migrant not accepted.
Poland and Hungary—the two countries who voted against the scheme in the Council—were the first to announce that they don’t plan on implementing it at all. For its part, Hungary already had a referendum on migrant redistribution in 2016, wherein 98% of voters rejected forced relocations—even though the vote was annulled due to low turnout (44%). Nonetheless, the issue seems to have more traction in the country now, with a recent representative poll suggesting that 77% of all Hungarians are opposed to the plan.
But another referendum in Poland, a country substantially bigger than Hungary, could really complicate things within the EU. For one, Warsaw plans to hold it together with the general elections in October or November, which would ensure a sufficient turnout to embed the result in Polish law and give something tangible to the government to fight any enforcement attempts from Brussels.
According to diplomatic sources at The Times, if the two countries (and possibly even more, as five member states abstained from supporting the pact) choose not to comply, that could set a dangerous precedent—like the ones we’ve seen before in the cases of France and Germany relating to certain environmental decision—and possibly paralyze the decision-making process of the entire EU.
Moreover, a prolonged diplomatic dispute between the EU and Poland (more intense than the current one about the rule of law) could exacerbate anti-EU sentiment in the country even more. According to one concerned EU diplomat, Brexit started with a similar referendum, so “we shouldn’t tempt the devil again.”
Nonetheless, the chance of Poland leaving the EU is very slim, although not negligible. Ever since the EU decided to withhold billions of cohesion funds from Poland due to certain rule of law concerns—which Warsaw deems an ideologically-motivated move—the public support for EU membership has dropped to an all-time low, polling around 64%.
