Poles should not pay for refusing more migrants, official says

EU-proposed changes in migration laws introduce financial penalties for refusing migrants, which Poles will find hard to accept, a Polish government official said on Thursday in Luxembourg.

Bartosz Grodecki, a deputy interior minister, said that Poles, who have already admitted large numbers of Ukrainian war refugees, found it hard to understand why they would have to pay for refusing more migrants.

"We can't just tell people who have already admitted over a million war refugees from Ukraine, that they will have to pay from their own pockets if they don't admit more," Grodecki said.

In May, EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson presented the EU ambassadors with a reform plan for the community's asylum and migration system. The proposals have reignited a 2015 debate around migration laws in the wake of the then migration crisis, when some EU states, including Poland, refused to accept mandatory relocation quotas, which spurred the EC to launch EU law infringement procedures against them.

The present reforms, which foresee a return to mandatory quotas and oblige refusing countries to pay EUR 22,000 per unadmitted migrant, have again been protested by Poland at Wednesday's sitting of the EU members' ambassadors in Brussels.

"There will be no acceptance for this in Poland," Grodecki said.

The reform plan is currently under debate in Brussels.