The recent election debate in Paris between the two biggest political forces on the French scene stirred up a surprising controversy in a completely different member state: Poland.
During the debate, the French prime minister boasted that the West had managed to convince Eastern Europe to accept the EU Migration Pact’s “mandatory solidarity mechanism—the scheme which forces countries to either accept refugees or pay €20,000 per migrant—which, according to the Polish conservative opposition, had “exposed” PM Donald Tusk’s “lies” that the scheme will not apply to the country.
Last week’s debate took place between France’s liberal PM Gabrial Attal and the lead candidate for the governing parties’ main populist challenger, National Rally MEP Jordan Bardella. When talking about the EU’s flagship Asylum and Migration Pact, Attal pointed out that even the Pact’s biggest opponents have been forced to agree in the end.
“Are you aware that we have managed to force [the Central European member states] to sign an agreement that says: you either accept migrants, … or pay for the border protection?” Attal asked Bardella.
According to the prominent conservative Polish Law and Justice (PiS) lawmaker Mariusz Bela, Attal’s suggestion directly contradicts Tusk’s earlier assurances that Poland will not have to participate in any way—either by accepting more refugees or by paying to avoid doing so. The MP accused the prime minister of lying and called for a parliamentary session for the government to explain itself.
“Everything indicates that Donald Tusk lied when he said that Poland would not have to accept illegal migrants,” Bela wrote on X. “The French Prime Minister has just stated that he managed to ‘force’ Eastern European countries to sign a document obliging them to accept migrants or pay high fees for refusal. This matter must be clarified as soon as possible.”
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński also accused the Polish premier of misleading the public, saying that Attal’s comments had “exposed Tusk’s lies.”
Neither Tusk nor his liberal cabinet members responded directly to the controversy.
When the EU Council’s final vote on the Migration Pact took place two weeks ago, only 20 out of 27 member states endorsed it fully, and three countries—Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary—opposed it entirely. Afterward, PM Tusk said that even though he was unable to stop it, the migrant relocation scheme would not apply to Poland as it has already accepted its fair share of refugees from Ukraine.
However, as the Ukrainian refugees have their own separate EU instruments while the Migration Pact covers asylum seekers from every other country, it’s not immediately clear whether there is an explicit agreement in place between Brussels and Poland or Tusk merely assumes the Polish ‘opt-out’ will work out this way.
