Poland to seek referendum on EU migrant plan

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki plans to seek a national referendum on whether people support the arrival of "thousands of illegal migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa" under the European Union's recent relocation policy.

In a video posted on social media platforms on Sunday, Morawiecki, of the ruling Law and Justice Party, proposed the idea of holding the referendum, to be conducted along with the country's parliamentary election set for Oct 15.

The video portrays a grim scenario in case more migrants are allowed into Poland by showing images of burning cars and street violence in Europe and a black man licking a knife. "Do you want this to happen in Poland as well?" Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice Party, said in the video.

Morawiecki said the full question that Polish people should answer in the proposed referendum is: "Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?"

Former European Council president Donald Tusk, the main opposition in the coming election, was the target in the video.

"Tusk is the greatest threat to our security, he is the greatest threat to Poland's security," Morawiecki said in the video, adding: "Let's not let Tusk, as an envoy of the Brussels elites, demolish security in Poland."

The Law and Justice Party, a right-wing populist party, is well-known for its restrictive position on immigration from Muslim and African countries but it welcomes refugees from Ukraine and other European countries. The party successfully used migration as a campaign issue to gain power in 2015.

Tusk, of the center-right Civil Platform party, last month accused Morawiecki of bringing in 130,000 people from those countries last year, 50 times more than when his party was in office in 2015.

Poland hosts more than a million Ukrainian refugees, the most among 27 EU member states. Some Polish officials have expressed that they regard Muslims and others from different cultures to be a threat to the nation's cultural identity and security.

EU interior ministers endorsed a deal in early June to balance the obligation for countries where most migrants arrive to process and lodge them against the requirement for other members to provide support, whether financially or by hosting refugees. But at a summit in late June, Poland and Hungary vetoed the deal to revamp EU's rules on the reception and relocation of asylum-seekers.

EU's asylum system collapsed eight years ago after more than a million people, most fleeing conflict in Syria, entered the bloc, triggering a crisis in many EU member states.