Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Why Poland’s New Government Is A Problem For Migrants To The EU

Aleks Szczerbiak 24th November 2015

Aleks Szczerbiak

Aleks Szczerbiak

The new Polish prime minister, Beata Szydło, had a firm message for her EU allies in her inauguration speech – they shouldn’t burden the Poles with their migrant problems. As she put it:

The issue of refugees is making us aware that the question of solidarity must be defined clearly. One cannot call attempts to export problems, which some countries have created without others’ participation, solidarity.

Szydło is deputy leader of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which won a decisive victory in October’s election, becoming the first political grouping in post-communist Poland to secure an overall parliamentary majority (Andrzej Duda, the recently elected president, is also from Law and Justice).

In the wake of the Friday 13 Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris, Szydło’s speech explicitly framed the new government’s programme in terms of increasing Poland’s national security – even while she mainly focused on the social and economic issues at the centre of the party’s election pledges. The obvious question for Poland’s allies is what it means for the country’s migration policy.

Doves vs Hawks

The former Civic Platform (PO) centrist government, led by Ewa Kopacz, tried to strike a balance between competing domestic and international pressures on the migrant front. It was concerned to be seen to be responding to popular anxieties about EU institutions trying to impose migrants on a country with very few ethnic minorities and virtually no non-Europeans.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

At the same time, the former administration came under growing pressure to take a greater share of migrants – both from the liberal-left domestic media and cultural establishment and from Brussels and other EU states.

Having initially opposed the European Commission’s proposal for mandatory migrant quotas, the government decided to share the burden following the wave of migration during the summer. It had feared it was in danger of being labelled one of the least migrant-friendly member states by the Western media, and switched to a policy of “responsible solidarity” instead. At the September EU summit on the migration crisis, Warsaw went against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and voted to accept 4,500-5,000 additional migrants, meaning a total of around 7,000 next year.

Law and Justice took a very different position. It argued that Poland should resist EU pressure to take in migrants and make policy decisions based on Polish interests. It warned there was a serious danger of making the same mistakes as many Western European countries, making Poles “guests in their own country”. During the election campaign it claimed that France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK were EU states with large Muslim communities where this scenario was already unfolding.

The party argued that rather than taking in migrants, the EU should concentrate on providing aid to refugee camps in the Middle East and North Africa. It accused the government of betraying its central European allies and violating national sovereignty by taking decisions under EU pressure without the agreement of the people. It argued that taking 7,000 migrants was unrealistic because family members would be able to join initial arrivals, and that it was naive to believe that this quota would not be used as a precedent to force Poland to take in additional migrants in the future.

In Office

So how tough will Law and Justice be now that it has power? In the wake of the Paris atrocities, new European minister Konrad Szymański suggested that Poland might try and unpick the September deal. He argued that the attacks showed that the EU’s response to the migrant crisis was flawed and his country’s participation in the relocation scheme was now untenable.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Yet Szymański did subsequently backtrack on this somewhat, saying that Poland would only accept migrants under the EU scheme if security guarantees were in place. Meanwhile Szydło and new foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski both said the new government would abide by the deal, while stressing that Warsaw would be seeking robust guarantees that any migrants were genuine refugees and did not pose a threat to national security.

Nonetheless, as Szydło’s policy speech made clear, the Law and Justice-led government is likely to take a much harder line on this issue than its predecessor. We can expect Poland to oppose taking in additional migrants under the EU scheme, even as their numbers show no sign of abating and more intensive attacks on Islamic State in Syria potentially increase the number of refugees leaving the country. States trying to put the issue of controlling the bloc’s external borders back on the agenda can expect support from the Poles too. Though time will tell how far the new government differs from Civic Platform in practice, Polish-style “responsible solidarity” may well turn out to be interpreted very differently by the new administration.

This column was first published by The Conversation

Aleks Szczerbiak

Ales Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex.

Home ・ Politics ・ Why Poland’s New Government Is A Problem For Migrants To The EU

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

biodiversity,COP15,China,climate COP15: negotiations must come out of the shadowsSandrine Maljean-Dubois
reproductive rights,abortion,hungary,eastern europe,united states,us,poland The uneven battlefield of reproductive rightsAndrea Pető
LNG,EIB,liquefied natural gas,European Investment Bank Ukraine is no reason to invest in gasXavier Sol
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
Fit for 55,access to justice,Aarhus convention Access to justice in the ‘Fit for 55’ packageFrederik Hafen

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube