Poland exempt from EU migrant quota – PM

The EU Council has freed Warsaw from its obligations under the bloc’s solidarity mechanism starting from 2026, Donald Tusk has claimed

The European Council has exempted Poland from the requirement to take in migrants starting from next year, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has claimed.

The EU has been grappling with mass immigration over the past two decades, since contributing to the implosion of Libya and Syria in 2011 and 2014 respectively, as well as backing the escalation of Kiev’s war with Moscow in February 2022, triggering waves of incoming people numbering in the millions.

In a post on X following a European Council meeting in Brussels on Monday, Prime Minister Tusk wrote that “Poland has been exempted from the obligation to accept migrants under the EU’s relocation mechanism.”

The EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum stipulates that all member states must contribute, in proportion to their population and total GDP, to the alleviation of migratory pressure on the worst-affected nations within the bloc.

Each member state is obliged to either accept a certain number of migrants relocated from the hotspots or shell out €20,000 ($23,000) per person they refuse to take in.

In an X post of his own on Monday, Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski stated that a “compromise was achieved regarding the solidarity mechanism,” with Warsaw exempt from “relocation, financial contributions, and other instruments.”

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The Polish media quoted the minister as saying that the “countries of the South are dissatisfied” with the outcome, apparently referring to Italy, Spain, Greece. The latter have seen particularly high numbers of newcomers illegally arriving on their shores in recent years.

In November, Poland, along with Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, made it clear they were prepared to challenge the EU leadership over the migrant relocation mechanism, according to Euronews.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Germany, an association representing organizers of traditional Christmas markets warned last month that rising security costs could lead to the number of traditional open-air events going down this year.

Christmas markets have been the target of multiple high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years.