Poland announcement causes cracks in EU migrant deal

Tuesday’s bomb attacks in Brussels have caused the first cracks in Europe’s week-old refugee-sharing deal with Turkey, after Poland announced it was reversing its decision to take in asylum-seekers.

Prime minister Beata Szydlo had previously confirmed Poland would take a contingent of 7,000 people over two years, an arrangement accepted by the previous Polish government.

Citing security concerns, the prime minister said on Wednesday that she did “not see how Poland could take in immigrants at the moment”.

“After what happened in Brussels . . . it’s not possible right now to say we’re okay with accepting any number of migrants,” said Mrs Szydlo.

Among the millions of migrants coming to Europe “there are also terrorists”, she said.

According to Brussels investigators, Tuesday’s bomb attacks were carried out by Belgian citizens.

Polish government spokesman Rafal Bochenek said the current system of checks on refugees coming to Europe from the Middle East was not working efficiently.

“We cannot . . . allow a situation to develop whereby the events that are now happening in western Europe spread to Poland,” he said. “Many such events have taken place in the past few months and we want to protect Polish citizens from that.”

‘Fleeing terror’

The European Commission said it had no comment on the Polish statements, but insisted that the security and migrations crises “should not be confused”. A spokesman said: “Those people who have arrived on our shores are fleeing precisely the same terror that has struck us, right here in the heart of Europe.”

Even before Tuesday’s attacks, the national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government in Warsaw was unenthusiastic about honouring the Polish contingent agreed by the last government, part of 150,000 asylum seekers from Syria and Eritrea that EU leaders agreed to redistribute last year.

During last year’s general election campaign Mrs Szydlo and her Law and Justice party were opposed to accepting asylum seekers. After taking power last autumn, however, Warsaw agreed to honour the deal, in line with an EU tradition where new governments do not reverse decisions of their predecessors.

The Polish shift on migration is in line with public opinion in the country: 64 per cent of Poles want their national borders closed to asylum seekers, according to a poll by the Adam Smith think tank.

Warsaw’s sceptical line on migration is shared by almost all political leaders, from Slovakia to Hungary. Prime minister Viktor Orbán said last week the EU’s migration deal would “import crime, terrorism, homophobia and a brand of anti-Semitism that sets synagogues ablaze”.

In northern Europe, populist parties have held back on exploiting the Brussels attacks to step up their campaign against migration.

Both Danish and Swedish populist right-wing parties joined their respective governments in restricting their remarks to expressions of sympathy with the Belgian people.

Germany’s populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came under fire after its co-leader, Frauke Petry, dismissed people as “hypocrites” for expressing sympathy on social media while supporting the EU’s asylum policy.