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POLAND-UN-MIGRATION-POLITICS
Poland rejects UN migration pact
WARSAW, Nov 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Poland on Tuesday said it would reject a
UN migration pact set to be adopted in December, following similar moves by
the United States, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic.
The rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government said in a statement that it
would not endorse “the agreement which does not guarantee security for Poland
and can also be an incentive to undertake illegal migration”.
The PiS government said the agreement is “contrary” to its the priorities,
including “the security of Polish citizens and maintaining control over
migration flows”.
It added that the pact had failed to give “strong guarantees regarding the
sovereign right of countries to decide who they accept on their territory and
to distinguish between legal and illegal migration”.
The United Nations’ Global Compact for Migration, whose final text was
agreed in July after 18 months of negotiations, is set to be adopted during a
conference in Morocco on December 10-11.
It lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and better manage
migratory flows as the number of people on the move worldwide has increased
to 250 million — three percent of the world’s population.
The US quit talks on the pact last December, Hungary’s anti-immigration
Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected it in July and Austria followed suit in
October.
The Czech Republic opted out earlier this month and Bulgaria has also said
it was inclined to reject the pact.
Previously, Poland and fellow eastern European Union states the Czech
Republic, Hungary and Slovakia flatly rejected a German-backed EU plan to
introduce a mandatory quota system following the 2015 migrant crisis.
EU leaders dropped the plan, which would have distributed migrants and
refugees across the bloc, in June.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:25 hrs