Poland vows to do everything it can to block the migrant redistribution scheme adopted by the EU Council last week and began to build an EP coalition of opponents to achieve its goal, the country’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party announced on Sunday, June 11th.
“Poland will block the solutions regarding the relocation of migrants,” said the Polish government spokesman, Piotr Müller in an interview with TVP Info, calling the Council decision evidence of “a short-term thinking, which will de facto cause migration waves to grow.”
According to Euractiv, the ambitious plan is to build a coalition of MEPs opposed to the Pact and pressure the Council into changing the text during its trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament in the coming weeks.
If the Migration Pact nonetheless does come into force, Warsaw is prepared to simply refuse compliance. “We have a right to reject them,” Müller said.
The main problem with the package is the controversial migrant relocation scheme—dubbed as ‘mandatory solidarity’—that was adopted by the Council’s internal ministers last Thursday. The mechanism would put migrant quotas back into the EU’s new Migration Pact, with an option to contribute financially instead of accepting refugees, at a rate of €20,000 per migrant.
But Poland simply wants neither option, as PM Mateusz Morawiecki said before the vote, stating that Warsaw will not participate in the relocation scheme at all. As Poland’s Permanent Representative to the EU, Andrzej Sadoś explained that the Polish government believes the financial contribution option is actually “a punishment” for refusal to comply with the quotas.
The decision in the Council was adopted by qualified majority voting—not by unanimity—meaning that no country could have vetoed the proposal alone. In the end, it was supported by only 20 member states. Poland and Hungary voted against it, while five others (including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Malta) abstained.
Naturally, these seven are the most likely candidates for Poland to build a ‘coalition’ with before the final decision is taken at the Council Summit next month, but not exclusively, as like-minded parties and MEPs can be found in all member states.
The primary ally will undoubtedly be Budapest, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was among the first to protest the decision taken without unanimous consent, saying that Brussels was abusing its power by doing so.
