WARSAW, Nov 20 — Poland today 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. — AFP
