Poland is ready to accept migrants from Europe but not from the Middle East
WARSAW, August 6 — RIA Novosti. Poland is ready to accept migrants from Eastern Europe, but refuses to participate in the EU programme, involving the passage into its territory of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, said in an interview with RIA Novosti the head of the Polish foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski.
“Poland is open to migration. Last year, for example, we issued 1 267 000 visas to Ukrainians. Half of them were permit. Thus, Poland has more than 1 million Ukrainians because they work in Poland. For the first half of this year, we gave more than 750 thousand visas to Ukrainians. So we are open to migration. We are also open to migration, not only from Ukraine but also from Belarus and other countries,” he said.
Waszczykowski said that while Poland wants to participate in the EU programme for the resettlement of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
“But we don’t want to participate in the mandatory resettlement of migrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa. We do not want to follow the EU’s decision adopted in September 2015. First, we believe that this decision was made illegally, that it is not in line with European treaties. We believe that this decision was wrong because we don’t want to create a permanent mechanism for permanent resettlement of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East,” he said.