WARSAW (Reuters) – A European Union deal on how to share out the responsibility for looking after migrants and refugees should be put to a referendum in Poland, the ruling party leader said on Thursday as he stressed Warsaw’s opposition to the agreement.
Under the deal each country would be responsible for a set number of people, but would not necessarily have to take them in.
Countries unwilling to receive irregular migrants and refugees arriving ad hoc to the EU would help their hosting peers through cash – around 20,000 euros per person – equipment or personnel.
Poland objects to the deal, saying that it has already taken in well over a million people fleeing the war in Ukraine and will not pay if it refuses to take in refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
“This issue must be the subject of a referendum and we will organise this referendum,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm. “Poles must speak out on this matter.”
Poland’s ruling nationalists law and Justice (PiS) were staunchly opposed to previous attempts by Brussels to relocate migrants using a quota system, citing security concerns.
The party has in the past been accused by human rights groups of stirring up xenophobia through its rhetoric on migration from majority-Muslim countries.
Poland has been at the forefront of efforts to help refugees from neighbouring Ukraine, and Kaczynski said the country had taken in 1.5 million to 2 million Ukrainians.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
