Poland
could have ‘empty chair’ at migration summit
The
first session of a new parliament conflicts with Malta meeting.
By JAN CIENSKI
11/6/15, 12:03 PM CET Updated 11/6/15, 4:38 PM CET
WARSAW — Poland
may not make an appearance at next week’s informal EU summit in
Malta on dealing with the migration crisis because it is in the midst
of a post-election government transition.
The summit is set
for November 12, but that is that same day that Andrzej Duda,
Poland’s president, set for swearing in a new parliament following
October 25 elections. That’s also the time that Ewa Kopacz, the
outgoing prime minister, will have to resign.
The issue is a
potential embarrassment for Warsaw. Kopacz strongly resisted the
European Commission’s plan to give each EU country a quota to
allocate asylum-seekers. She buckled in the end and agreed that
Poland would accept about 7,500 of the 160,000 refugees being
redistributed around Europe.
However, the Law and
Justice party, which defeated Kopacz’s Civic Platform in the
election, is strongly opposed to accepting refugees from the Middle
East.
With more than
200,000 refugees landing in Europe in October, and the Commission
predicting that 3 million more could arrive by 2017, Donald Tusk,
president of the European Council and a former Polish prime minister,
called the informal gathering to get a grip on the growing crisis.
The meeting is being held as a postscript to a larger summit with
European and African leaders on migration.
“If we are to
avoid the worst we must speed up our actions,” Tusk said in the
invitation.
But that doesn’t
match Poland’s internal political calendar.
Kopacz intends to be
in the parliament to hand in her resignation. Beata Szydło, the
prime ministerial candidate for Law and Justice, could replace her
almost immediately.
“You could imagine
a situation where an hour later a new government is sworn in. We
can’t take part in the summit,” Cezary Tomczyk, spokesman for the
outgoing government, told Polish radio on Friday morning.
Law and Justice
officials insisted that there is no problem at all.
Witold
Waszczykowski, a possible candidate to become foreign minister,
downplayed the importance of the summit as a “brain storm” that
isn’t enough to deal with the crisis, and suggested on Polish radio
that Tusk scheduled the event on purpose to create problems for
Poland’s government transition.
He proposed that an
ambassador be delegated to represent Poland.
Tomczyk in turn said
Poland could only be represented by a prime minister or a president,
but Małgorzata Sadurska, Duda’s chief of staff, said in a radio
interview that the president would be too busy that day with the
first session of parliament.
“An empty chair
will be the symbol of Polish diplomacy at this summit,” Tomczyk
said.
Authors:
Jan Cienski
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