Polish Deputy Foreign Minister: Poland will not accept refugees from Muslim countries
Poland will not accept refugees from the south, despite the promise made by the previous Polish government to do so, as stated by Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland, Jan Dziedziczak, rp.pl reports.
"The decision is binding, we will not accept refugees from Muslim countries. We, as the government, as politicians, simply implementing what our society wants from us, what we are obliged to do by our citizens," Dziedziczak said.
He recalled that the previous Prime Minister of Poland, Ewa Kopacz, and the PO-PSL coalition (Civic Platform - Polish Peasants’ Party) agreed to accept refugees in September 2015, while the opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), opposed it.
Dziedziczak noted that a significant number of refugees from the south are men. "These are economic migrants who are looking for a comfortable life here," he stressed.
In the fall of 2015, the Kopacz government pledged to accept 7,000 refugees from the Middle East and North Africa as part of the distribution of 160,000 refugees among EU countries. Subsequently, the new government of Beata Szydło refused to do so for security reasons.
The European Commission is currently trying to make Poland, along with the Czech Republic and Hungary, legally responsible for refusing to accept refugees from the south.
One of the arguments Poland makes against accepting refugees is that a significant number of migrants from Eastern Europe, including those from Ukraine, have already been accepted into Poland. According to estimates, there are already between 500,000 and one million Ukrainians in Poland.