For Europe: Opposition supporters in Warsaw on June 4th
Image: Getty
Western European cities are unsafe for women, says the PiS. In the election campaign, she is now railing against Brussels’ migration policy. That works for many Poles.
Nfter the opposition’s powerful demonstration almost two weeks ago in Warsaw, Poland’s national-conservative governing party, the PiS, launched a counterattack. One of the fields she chose for this was migration policy, which, like in 2015, is likely to become an important campaign issue. The states of the European Union had decided against the votes of Poland and Hungary that if certain countries were too burdened, other member states would have to take on asylum seekers. In the event of a refusal, a state would have to pay 20,000 euros for each person it does not want to take on.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński said this type of redistribution “endangers the sovereignty of Poland and the sovereignty of other states in the EU”. After the failure of a concept of redistribution as a result of the 2015 migration crisis, the EU is now trying to push through a similar solution. Poland has hardly received any help from Brussels for taking in more than a million refugees from Ukraine – Kaczyński spoke of “at most 100 euros” per person – and should now submit to this solution anyway. That was intolerable, “that must be the subject of a referendum,” Kaczyński cried on Thursday in the House of Representatives, the Sejm. His group then rose from their seats and applauded.
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