Mateusz Morawiecki said: We want to send a clear warning signal, because Lampedusa is such a warning.
Tomasz Gzell/PAP
Poland’s cabinet has adopted a resolution with which it wants to send a strong signal to the European Commission (EC) and Polish opposition that it has no consent to illegal migration, the prime minister said after the cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Mateusz Morawiecki said the cabinet had adopted the resolution concerning a migration crisis on the Italian island of Lampedusa and proposals concerning migration policy announced by EU bodies to deal with large migratory inflows.
In a statement after the cabinet meeting, Morawiecki said the resolution was a signal from the government to both the EC and “all political forces in the country, including PO (the centrist Civic Platform – PAP), that it does not consent to illegal immigration.
“We also want to send a clear warning signal, because Lampedusa is such a warning,” the prime minister said. “The whole of Europe, the whole EU, could look like Lampedusa if we flounder in the same mistakes, the schemes and mechanisms that the EC proposes.
“They have not learned from the mistakes of the past and have returned to those mechanisms that were already completely rejected at the European Council sitting of June 2018,” Morawiecki said. “I remind you that the European Council rejected the forced relocation mechanism and any payments for not accepting illegal immigrants. Now the EC is returning to that.”
Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who leads the ruling Law and Justice party, said the situation on Lampedusa was symbolic of a situation that threatened the whole of Europe.
“The only (solution) is a real, genuine sealing of the borders and taking decisions to return those who get through,” he said.
The European Commission has proposed a migrant pact, under which EU members will have to accept an initial quota of 30,000 migrants from countries bearing the brunt of migration from the Middle East and Africa, such as Greece and Italy, or pay about EUR 22,000 for every migrant they refuse to admit.