The Polish government will not execute the immigration rules of the European Union, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the European Committee on Friday, 7 February 2025. Poland is currently chairman of the EU, but this does not change the stance it had on the matter.
There is nothing weird about the refusal by the Polish government to accept asylum seekers, if one looks at the policies of the former conservative and current central government. Tusk already announced in November his government wants to stop foreigners to seek asylum in Poland, bringing Poland against basic international human rights, laid down by the United Nations in 1951 and 1967. Poland is also a UN member state since 1945.
In this way, also Poland is responsible to comply to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 14), which states that everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries. According to the UN Refugee Convention, refugees may also not be returned to countries where they risk being persecuted.
But, there is no public majority support in Poland for a broader acceptance of asylum seekers. There has been some protest against the way Poland has pushed back and dumped back refugees that were often forced across the Belarusian border by the Belarusian armed forces, but the Poles in general are happy with their fairly homogenous society and do not like it to change.
Two million Ukrainians
Both the Polish government and many in the Polish society were quite welcome to Ukrainian refugees though, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. An estimated 2 million Ukrainians now live in Poland, many came since Russia annexed the Crimea in 2004. Both the current and former Polish governments emphasize the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees and immigrants when dealing with the EU.
Sweden as frightening example
In Polish print and social media, the situation in Sweden – just across the Baltic Sea – is for many a fearful example of how they do not want Poland to be. Sweden has been accepting hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Balkans in the 1990s, and from Syria and Afghanistan in the last decade without having a long-term plan how to support that influx. Sure, housing was provided, but on the job market and in social status there are huge gaps with the native Swedish population.
Neighbourhoods with up to 96% immigrants with populations that are hardly assimilated with the Swedish society, a tremendous rise in gun violence, attacks with explosives and gang wars in Sweden are often blamed on first, second and third generation immigrants by the Poles. Not without any reason, as some of the leading gangs seem to have their leadership roots in Kurdish territories in Southwest Asia (Middle East).
There are hardly any gun fights in Poland, and neighbourhoods are not plagued with explosion of homes and front doors like in Sweden or the Netherlands.
Reception of asylum seekers
By June 2026, all European Union member states are expected to implement stricter rules for the admission and reception of asylum seekers, and at least 30,000 of them are to be distributed among the EU nations, relative to the countries’ population and income. Poland is one of the nations at the outer border of the EU.
“We are open to work with everyone to protect Europe from illegal migration, but Poland is not ready to accept additional burdens,” Polish Prime Minister Tusk told to the European Commission. | © 2025 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com. Featured photo of the Polish flag (Photographer unknown, public domain)