On Sunday, in a video posted on social networks, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposed holding a referendum asking citizens if they support the arrival of “thousands of illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa as part of the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy”. There has not yet been an official confirmation, but the idea would be to organize it in conjunction with the parliamentary elections to be held on October 15th.
Morawiecki refers to the agreement reached in June on the reform of the Dublin Regulation, the European standard that regulates the management of migrants and asylum seekers. The reform provides that in the event of large arrivals of asylum seekers, a quota is transferred to other countries. Alternatively, governments will be able to choose to pay a certain amount for each asylum seeker they decide not to accept. To enter into force, the reform must first pass from the approval of the European Parliament within the first months of 2024.
The current governments of Poland and Hungary are historically hostile to migration from North Africa and the Middle East, and on this hostility they have built an important part of their internal propaganda: they are therefore very opposed to any form of relocation and have announced that they are not to cooperate, despite the fact that the current reform is less rigid for them than the proposal made in 2018, in which relocations were mandatory for all EU countries (therefore there was no possibility to refuse them).
– Read also: Why Eastern European countries are so hostile to migrants
The video Morawiecki posted on social networks shows various scenes alluding to what he thinks would happen if more migrants were admitted to Poland, amidst burning cars and violence in the streets. The images are accompanied by the voice of Jarosław Kaczyński, former prime minister and leader of the conservative Law and Justice party, the same as Morawiecki, who rhetorically asks: «Do you want this to happen in Poland too? Do you want to stop being master of your own country?».
The issues of welcoming migrants and internal security, historically used by Law and Justice to gather consensus, will also be central to the October elections, in which Morawiecki’s party expects to maintain power. Conservatives are also directing close attention to the growing number of African and Middle Eastern migrants entering Poland through Belarus, with which Poland shares a 400km border: around 19,000 crossing attempts have been made so far this year, compared with 16,000 of the whole of 2022.
Belarus has been accused of strategically welcoming thousands of migrants into its territory and then pushing them towards the border with Poland and the Baltic countries in an attempt to embarrass the European Union (political opponent of Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian Belarusian regime), exploiting the hostility of Eastern European countries to migrants.
– Read also: How migrants get to Belarus
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Poland has also welcomed more than a million people fleeing Ukraine, mostly Christians and whites. In fact, a large part of conservative propaganda focuses on the idea that welcoming people of different cultures and religions threatens the cultural identity and security of the country.