The EU migrant-sharing plan conjures memories of what Poland went through during World War II, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told the Times of Malta.
Warsaw is currently at loggerheads with Brussels after refusing to participate in a migrant burden-sharing programme introduced last year.
Its refusal has prompted strong condemnation from the European Commission, with the European Court of Justice expected to weigh in on the programme’s legality and the Polish government’s position later this year.
Speaking to the Times of Malta during a whirlwind visit to Malta last week, Mr Waszczykowski said the Polish government was adamant that it would not carry a load of fleeing migrants, currently residing in camps in Italy and Greece.
He said: “You simply must understand, forced relocation carries some bad political connotations: we were forced to resettle in the 19th century to Siberia, and we were expelled from our country during World War II.”
Poland, he insisted, would not abide by any resettlement programmes. It was simply too big a pill to swallow.
“We don’t want Poland to become one big camp… for people to spend their lives protected and guarded behind fences. Migration into a country should be voluntary,” he said.
Poland is not alone in its defiance, standing with Hungary against the rest of the EU mem-ber states. The two countries have refused to accept any of the 160,000 migrants who need to be shared across Europe.
Mr Waszczykowski, however, said he sympathised. Poland, was surrounded by conflicts and constant migration. The country has reportedly issued more than a million work and residency permits over the past year.
“The situation we have today, is most similar to what we saw at the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Asked further about Poland’s position on the resettlement programme, Mr Waszczykowski said the country was still open to “genuine humanitarian” cases.
“There are migrants, and then there are refugees. Of course we will continue to accept refugees, that is our duty, but with mig-rants, it is a different matter, especially ones that do not even want to come to Poland in the first place,” he said.
Mr Waszczykowski has been Polish foreign minister for 17 months since his party, the conservative Law and Justice Party, swooped to power. EU press has branded his party eurosceptic, but he prefers ‘eurorealist’.
A sceptic, he said, does not trust Europe, or believe in integration with the union. “We want to repair, mend and make the EU better.” Mr Waszczykowski said the Polish administration wanted to reform the institutions in Brussels “from the inside”.
“We believe that some institutions need to be redefined – for instance the commission. The council is made up of people with democratic legitimacy – the commission is not. In our view, it therefore does not have the legitimacy to monitor or impose sanctions on Member States,” he said.