On the first day of the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg, a debate was held on the reintroduction of internal border controls in certain member states and its impact on the Schengen Area. PiS MEPs Maciej Wąsik and Jadwiga Wiśniewska spoke during the discussion.
Maciej Wąsik recalled that the migration crisis in Europe began with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous “Herzlich Willkommen” in January 2015. He noted that at that time, hundreds of thousands of migrants began their “march on Germany,” but when too many arrived, Germany said “stop” and expected neighboring countries to step in and help. He explained that, as a result, Germany devised a migration pact “so that its neighbors would be forced to accept illegal migrants and provide for their upkeep, thereby paying for the mistakes of German migration policy.”
The Polish politician also addressed the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, which began in 2021. He noted that Poland had then begun a firm defense of its border, even though the illegal migrants were heading not toward Poland but toward Germany. “When we were building a barrier at the border, we heard from German European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the European Union ‘will not finance barbed wire at the borders.’ Today, it is Germany that is closing its borders,” commented the Polish politician, arguing that this was yet another grave mistake. “We must firmly defend Europe’s external borders, not destroy the Union’s greatest achievement, which is the Schengen Area,” he urged. He added that illegal migrants should be resolutely and en masse relocated to their countries of origin.
Jadwiga Wiśniewska responded to remarks made by Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, who was present at the debate. “I listened to your speech with astonishment, because you did not address the real reasons for our debate. Today we should be discussing the fact that it was those who caused the migration crisis who introduced border controls,” stated the MEP. She also noted that today “German authorities, in violation of the law, are dumping large numbers of illegal migrants into Poland, bringing them to the Polish side and leaving them near supermarkets and under bridges.”
Wiśniewska recalled that when the PiS government repeatedly warned of the consequences of illegal migration—the threat of Islamic extremism and crime—it was labeled “racist.” “And yet it is Germany that is introducing border controls today, for precisely these reasons,” the MEP noted, citing the German interior minister, who justified the introduction of border controls precisely by the need to combat illegal migration. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have caused a very deep crisis. The greatest threat to security in the European Union is Germany, which is the architect of migration policy. And the migration package is, in effect, like pouring gasoline on a fire—it will not solve the migration problem in any way. We need to strengthen the European Union’s external borders,” the Polish politician urged.
