2018-11-20 19:15 update: 2018-11-25, 21:53
Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
The Polish government will not support the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), the Council of Ministers decided on Tuesday.
The government decided that Poland would not support this agreement either at the United Nations conference to adopt the compact to be held in Marrakech on December 10-11 nor during the subsequent vote at the UN General Assembly.
According to the statement from the Government Information Centre (CIR), "the document has not meet Poland's demands regarding the confirmation of adequately strong guarantees of the sovereign right to decide who the countries accept in their territory and the distinction between legal and illegal migration".
CIR added that "the wording in the final draft, especially regarding the distinction between legal and illegal migrants, can cause significant difficulties in the interpretation and implementation of the agreement."
According to a Tuesday statement from the Ministry of Internal Affairs "the agreement is contrary to the priorities of the Polish government, which are the security of Polish citizens and the maintenance of control over migration flow".
The statement stressed that the Polish government believes the in-situ help is the most effective way of assisting those affected by war conflicts.
"Therefore, the Polish government is directing humanitarian aid mainly to Syria and Iraq. The government increases its humanitarian and development assistance funds every year and in 2017 alone, humanitarian aid was six times greater than in 2015 and amounted to PLN 174 million (EUR 40 mln). Together with development aid funds it was PLN 2.5 billion (EUR 579 mln). This strategy is also being consistently implemented in 2018," the interior ministry pointed out.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is a non-legally binding, cooperative framework, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. The process of developing this global compact for migration began last year. The United Nations conference to adopt the compact will be held in Marrakech, Morocco in December this year. The United States, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria will not join the pact. At the beginning of November, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that it was very unlikely that Poland would be part of the global UN pact on migration.
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