Controversy over refugee admission
Poland to vote in referendum on EU asylum compromise
08/13/2023, 10:10 am
The EU has reached an agreement: Member States will in future be obliged to take in refugees. Warsaw does not want to accept that – and lets the Poles decide whether they agree to the “acceptance of thousands of illegal immigrants”. However, this will not change anything in the EU agreement.
The Poles are to vote in a referendum at the same time as the parliamentary elections on the EU asylum compromise and a mandatory admission of refugees. The relevant question should be: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the compulsory admission mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?” This was announced by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a video clip shared on social media.
The outcome of such a referendum would have no impact on the decision-making process within the EU. At the beginning of June, the EU interior ministers agreed on a reform of the asylum policy. This stipulates that the acceptance of refugees should no longer be voluntary in the future, but mandatory. Countries that do not want to take in refugees would be forced to pay compensation. The government in Warsaw resists. Poland demands that each EU country should decide for itself how to support countries with particularly high migration numbers.
A new parliament will be elected in Poland on October 15. The national-conservative governing party PiS is under pressure because of high inflation, strict abortion laws and various scandals surrounding nepotism. Against this background, party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski brought up the idea of a referendum parallel to the elections in June. Originally, it was only supposed to be about EU migration policy.
Meanwhile, the PiS has announced that there will be four questions in the referendum. The first concerns the privatization of state-owned companies, the second concerns raising the retirement age, and the third concerns EU asylum policy. The fourth question is scheduled to be announced on Monday. The opposition accuses the PiS of using the referendum to mobilize additional voters for the parliamentary elections with its own agenda.