WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s ruling social gathering desires to ask voters in a referendum whether or not they help accepting “1000’s of unlawful immigrants from the Center East and Africa” as a part of a European Union relocation plan, the prime minister stated Sunday, as his conservative social gathering seeks to carry onto energy in an October parliamentary election.
Mateusz Morawiecki introduced the referendum query in a brand new video printed on social media. It indicated that his social gathering, Legislation and Justice, is looking for to make use of migration in its election marketing campaign, a tactic that helped it take energy in 2015.
Poland is internet hosting greater than one million Ukrainian refugees, who’re primarily white and Christian, however officers have lengthy made clear that they contemplate Muslims and others from completely different cultures to be a risk to the nation’s cultural identification and safety.
EU inside ministers in June endorsed a plan to share out accountability for migrants getting into Europe with out authorization, the basis of one of many bloc’s longest-running political crises.
The Polish authorities desires to carry the referendum alongside the parliamentary election, scheduled for Oct. 15. Morawiecki stated that the query would say: “Do you help the admission of 1000’s of unlawful immigrants from the Center East and Africa underneath the pressured relocation mechanism imposed by the European paperwork?”
The video saying the query consists of scenes of burning vehicles and different road violence in Western Europe. A Black man licks an enormous knife in obvious anticipation of committing a criminal offense. Social gathering chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski then says: “Would you like this to occur in Poland as properly? Do you need to stop being masters of your individual nation?”
Leaders have introduced two different questions in current days. One will ask voters for his or her views on privatizing state-owned enterprises and the opposite will ask in the event that they help elevating the retirement age, which Legislation and Justice lowered to 60 for girls and 65 for males.
The questions are offered in a approach clearly supposed to indicate the opposition social gathering, Civic Platform, as a risk to the pursuits of Poles. The professional-business and pro-EU social gathering, which ruled from 2007 to 2015, raised the retirement age throughout its time in energy, favored some privatization and signaled a willingness to just accept a couple of thousand refugees earlier than it misplaced energy.
Europe’s asylum system collapsed eight years in the past after properly over one million folks entered the bloc — most of them fleeing battle in Syria — and overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy, within the course of sparking one of many EU’s largest political crises.
The 27 EU nations have bickered ever since over which international locations ought to take accountability for folks arriving with out authorization, and whether or not different members must be obliged to assist them cope.
Initially Poland was neither an entry nation nor a vacation spot nation for migrants and refugees. It grew to become a front-line state two years in the past when migrants started crossing from Belarus, one thing European authorities view as an effort by the Russian ally to generate turmoil in Poland and different European international locations.
Poland responded by constructing a big wall on its border. It has just lately elevated its navy presence on the border fearing an uptick in migration and different potential instability.
In addition to disagreements over migration, Legislation and Justice has lengthy been in battle with the EU over a notion by the bloc that the Warsaw authorities has been eroding democratic norms.