'No refugee from the Middle East can enter Poland,' says PM

'No refugee from the Middle East can enter Poland,' says PM
The Polish government will not take refugees from the Middle East, refusing to meet EU’s mandatory refugee quota.
2 min read
05 January, 2018
Mateusz Morawiecki says Poland will not taken Middle Eastern refugees [AFP]
The Polish government will not meet the EU’s mandatory refugee quota and take in refugees from the Middle East, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said this week.

"We are consistently of the belief, formulated by Law and Justice ahead of the elections of 2015, that we will not be allowing migrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa to enter Poland," Morawiecki said in an interview with Radio Poland.

He denied Warsaw is assisting with the refugee crisis and maintained that Poland has taken in refugees from Ukraine, but has just not given them refugee status.

This comes after a high-level senator said last week Syrian refugees may be brought to Poland for medical treatment.

Adam Bielan, the conservative deputy senate speaker said that a "discussion on the subject is taking place within the government".

He added, "I believe that we can consider temporary aid to those most needy, elderly people, small children, especially Christians," stressing he was not speaking for the government.

Bielan also said it should outline how long patients would require treatment, how long they would stay in Poland and what happens when they are ready to return to Syria.

In 2017 alone, over 3,000 migrants have died while making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, according to the Missing Migrants Project. 

‘Pray for Islamic Holocaust’

Mid-November, a rally took place in which tens of thousands of Poles marched through the capital Warsaw in an independence day event organised by a nationalist movement that calls for a "white Poland".

Nationalist protesters carried banners that read "White Europe", "Clean Blood" and "Pray for Islamic Holocaust" in a rally that outnumbered a government organised independence demonstration.

Police estimate that 60,000 people took part in the independence day event. While the majority were Poles, protesters came from across Europe waving flags and symbols associated with the far-right.