Paris Terror Attack: Poland’s new government uses massacre to reject EU

Poland can not accept migrants relocated under a European Union quota system after the attacks in Paris without security guarantees, its incoming European affairs minister said on Saturday, in a sign that the attacks may seriously undermine EU refugee policy. “The attacks mean there’s a need for an even deeper revision of the European policy regarding the migrant crisis”.

US President Barack Obama, who arrived in Antalya on Sunday morning, has urged fellow G20 members to consider refugees not only a humanitarian issue but “an economic opportunity worth seizing”.

“The decision of the European Council that we criticised – to allow refugees and immigrants relocation to all EU countries – still has the status of binding EU law”, Konrad Szymanski wrote in an article for the wPolityce website.

But “after the tragic events of Paris we do not see the political possibility of respecting them”.

Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s rising foreign minister, voiced his concerns as well, saying Europe needed to “approach in a different fashion the Muslim community living in Europe which hates this continent and wishes to destroy it”. The new PiS government is set to be inaugurated on Monday. In fact, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, threatening more to come.

The refusal of Eastern European countries to host refugees prompted the EU to adopt the refugee resettlement plan among its 28 member states, last September.

European Union countries should not give in to base reactions of rejecting refugees after the Paris attacks because the shooters were criminals, not asylum seekers, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday.

Under the plan, agreed by the outgoing center-right, pro-EU government, Poland was to take in 4,500 refugees, adding to a few 2,000 it has already accepted.

Along with increasing police and border controls, the minister said that security forces will also keep a close watch on far-right extremists.

“Germany, too, remains firmly as ever in the firing line of global terrorism”, he insisted.