Poland and the EU Face a Troubled Future

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

The 2015 refugee crisis in Europe was a major factor in the decision of the British people to leave the European Union a year later. Will a new refugee wave, among other issues, result in a Polish exit?

Poland has seen big increases in migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Iran trying to enter the country since the start of the summer. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government is organizing the passage of migrants from war-torn and impoverished countries into Poland and other EU neighbors.

This comes in retaliation for EU economic sanctions placed on Belarus after the EU accused the authoritarian leader of stealing last year’s election and ordering human rights violations and the hounding of political opponents.

“We used to catch migrants in droves here. Now, forget it, you will be catching them yourselves,” Lukashenko taunted the EU in July.

All migrants now need to do is fly to Belarus, drive for several hours to the border, and then simply cross on foot into one of the three neighbouring EU countries -- Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Belarus has helped build the infrastructure to accommodate these travelers, too. At the beginning of the year, there was only a single flight from Iraq to Minsk, the Belarusian capital. Now there are several flights a week from multiple Iraqi cities. Iraqi Airways says their flights from Iraq to Belarus are sold out through November.

Since August, 16,000 migrants have crossed into Poland. Polish border guards detained eight times as many people crossing the 400-kilometre border illegally as they did in the whole of 2020. The guards have been joined by nearly 6,000 Polish troops who will also be guarding the frontier.

Poland contends that Lukashenko, backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has launched a hybrid attack to destabilize the EU. “This phenomenon that we’ve been witnessing there recently is a kind of weaponization of migration,” remarked Marcin Przydacz, the deputy foreign minister of Poland.

“We have decided to build a permanent barrier along the Polish-Belarusian border. The experience of other countries affected by the migrant crisis shows that this is the only effective method,” remarked Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczynsk on Oct. 7, speaking at a meeting of the National Security and Defence Affairs Committee which focussed on the situation on the border.

But humanitarian groups are criticizing Poland for pushing some migrants back to Belarus rather than reviewing their asylum applications, in violation of EU law. A few have died as a result.

And the European Commission has spoken out against EU border walls. At an EU summit meeting held Oct. 21-22 in Brussels, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ruled out any barriers on the bloc’s external borders, telling leaders that “that there will be no funding of barbed wire and walls.” This did not sit well with Warsaw.

Poland is already at odds with the EU over a number of other issues, especially the escalating fight over whether EU legislation supersedes Polish domestic law. Von der Leyen has threatened Poland with sanctions, including a block on the dispersal of 51 billion dollars in pandemic recovery grants and loans because of Poland’s insistence that key parts of EU law are not compatible with the Polish constitution.

This claim by Warsaw, given credence by a ruling from the country’s own constitutional court, follows a series of European Court of Justice rulings demanding the repeal of measures in Poland that it said is undermining the independence of the country’s judiciary.

In a speech at the EU summit, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawieck accused the EU of “blackmail.”  A few days earlier, he contended they were trying to turn Poland into a “province.” He also accused the EU of putting a “gun to our head.”

The Polish position has been described by France’s European Affairs minister, Clément Beaune, as a “de facto” exit from the EU. It has been portrayed as a back door “Polexit” by commentators.

Brussels maintains that EU law is supreme yet that its member states are sovereign. Poland is making it clear this is nonsense. There has never been any consensus on EU law supremacy. Even the German Constitutional Court has always seen potential for conflict in it.