Polish PM slams EU policy as ‘export of migrant problem’

WARSAW: Poland's new right-wing prime minister on Wednesday took aim at a hotly contested EU programme for the redistribution of refugees around the bloc, insisting that some members were using it to burden others.
"Attempts to export a problem that certain countries have themselves created without the input of other members cannot be called solidarity," Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told parliament in a keynote policy address ahead of a confidence vote her majority Law and Justice (PiS) government is expected to win with ease.
Referring to the Paris terror attacks, Szydlo also told legislators that her "government’s top priority is the security of Poles."
Her comments come as last week’s Paris attacks and the discovery of a Syrian passport near one of the assailant’s bodies have revived the European debate on whether to take a harder line on migrants. With Europe facing its biggest migration crisis since World War II, EU states have bickered for months on how to stem the flow and share out the new arrivals, the majority of whom head to wealthier members like Germany.
On Monday Szydlo said Poland would honour the commitments made by the previous liberal government, which agreed to host more than 9,000 refugees in the framework of the EU’s relocation plan.
But her government has also vowed a harder line on migrant crisis since -- even floating the idea of sending Syrians back to "liberate" their country.
Having vowed to ‘fix’ Poland, Szydlo said Wednesday that her government would make good on a long list of generous welfare promises by gearing economic policy to "escape the middle income trap."