Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in recent days has dropped something of a bombshell, confirming that his country will be exempt from the EU Migration Pact relocation component, which would have seen Poland forced to accept migrants from other member states or pay a significant financial contribution instead.
Confirming the exemption on social media, Mr Tusk wrote “I said that there would be no relocation of migrants in Poland, and there won’t be! Done”.
“That we would tighten the barrier on the border with Belarus – and it is today the best-guarded border in Europe. That we would tighten visa and asylum regulations – and Poland has become a model for others,” the Polish PM wrote.
As is the nature of Poland’s polarised politics, Mr Tusk and his supporters claim credit for the development, while opposition figures attribute it to the influence of conservative President, Karol Nawrocki, whose immigration-sceptical stance was seen as key to his success in the election earlier this year.
Regardless of who gets to claim the credit, the end result is the same. The reporting of a couple of Polish news outlets, confirmed by Mr Tusk, indicates that Poland will not be receiving migrants relocated from other member states, and won’t financially suffer for doing so.
The given reasons for the exemption are twofold: Poland’s efforts in the face of the Ukrainian migration crisis, which saw millions of Ukrainians pass over the southeastern border in the weeks following the Russian invasion, and the ongoing ‘hybrid-warfare’ on Poland’s eastern border, which has seen migration weaponised by Belarus to create unrelenting, continuous pressure.
Neither of those elements is negligible. While a great many Ukrainians passed through Poland on journeys elsewhere, including to Ireland, millions stayed, many Poles proudly noting that this was managed without the establishment of a single migrant camp in the years since February 2022.
On the latter point, the latest figures I could find suggested that Poland’s border with Belarus is currently manned by approximately 11,000 border guards, police and soldiers, who are facing hundreds of illegal, often violent, crossing attempts every week. In an update just last weekend, the border guard noted over 130 attempts at breaching the border, with stones and nails thrown at patrols sent to stop them on these occasions.
It is an exceptionally serious situation. But then, one could reasonably respond, isn’t Ireland’s?
It’s long been known that the number of Ukrainian refugees received by Ireland was something of an oddity, given Ireland’s size and, even more to the point, location. A look at the top recipient nations of Ukrainian refugees on a per capita basis reveals a list of central and eastern European nations in geographical and cultural proximity to Ukraine like Poland, Estonia, Czechia, Slovakia and…Ireland.
On a per capita basis, Ireland is streets ahead of any other western European country when it comes to the number of Ukrainian refugees it agreed to house, a development that has not been without its difficulties. We need not rehash here the migration-related pressures the country is currently experiencing, but suffice it to say, while not of a ‘hybrid warfare’ nature, Ireland is most certainly in a position to hold its hands up and say we need an exemption here.
So why don’t we? It’s hard to conclude much other than that we, for whatever reason, find it hard to say no to Brussels, even when we’d have every right to do so.
Donald Tusk is widely perceived as Brussels’ man in Poland and so, if he is to be credited with Poland’s good fortune, he clearly decided this was a matter worth cashing in some of that goodwill for. Meanwhile, for all of our efforts to remain in lockstep with the EU on matters great and small, we not only don’t advocate for our own interests where we legitimately could – as in the case of the Migration Pact’s relocation mechanism – we find ourselves excluded from things that are potentially in our interest, like the EU’s new Entry and Exist System (EES).
Hungarian International spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, responding to the news of Poland’s exemption criticised Brussels’ treatment of Hungary on the basis of its approach to migration, and added that the “EU’s double standards couldn’t be clearer: one rule for Brussels’ favorites, another for those who speak honestly about migration”.
While there are complexities behind Ireland’s exclusion from the EES (detailed by Matt Treacy here), the fact remains that a little more acknowledgement from the Irish elite of the extreme effort made by the country in the face of truly unprecedented levels of inward migration, and a little advocacy on that basis, wouldn’t do any harm, as Poland has demonstrated.
It might even do some good.