In an article for the UK daily The Financial Times, Rostowski writes: “Western Europeans are indulging in an orgy of self-righteousness over the Syrian refugee crisis, and eastern Europeans have become a favourite whipping boy in this story.”
Polish PM Ewa Kopacz said this week that Poland will accept refugees, not immigrants. “As many as we can afford: not one more, nor less,” she said.
Earlier, Poland was among several central and eastern European countries to veto a European Commission emergency plan in Brussels on Monday to relocate 120,000 refugees.
The Polish government pledged in July to take in 2,000 refugees from Syria and Eritrea, but Kopacz is noncommital on upping the quotas.
On Wednesday 9 September, European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker called for the EU to show 'solidarity' in accepting new proposals for the distribution of the refugees, taking in 120,000 in addition to 40,000 already agreed.
“How can they fail to show compassion and solidarity, it is asked, when they themselves benefited for years from refugee status in the west, and are at present the largest group of intra-EU economic migrants? Clearly, these newly minted Europeans do not understand European values, are totally egotistical, and are probably xenophobes and racist,” Rostowski writes.
Rostowski goes on to write that there are elements of xenophobia and even racism in the reactions of some east Europeans to the crisis, the new eastern member states are acting in their own self-interest.
“Just as Germany has resisted such calls over the eurozone crisis, demanding that existing rules be honoured in spite of a radical change in circumstances since the 2008 financial crisis, so the east Europeans have a strong argument when they say that EU rules on refugees should simply be applied.”
Rostowski argues that the vast majority of the people coming to Europe via the western Balkans and Libya are genuine refugees, not economic migrants and that under the Dublin principles they have an absolute right under international law to asylum in the first safe country they come to, and that country has an absolute obligation to accept them irrespective of the numbers involved.
He added that solidarity and self-interest do not require countries to accept refugee quotas, whether mandatory or not. (jh/rk)
Read the original article here.