Poland cannot afford taking too many immigrants right now, Polish FM Witold Waszczykowski said in Bucharest on Monday. “In Poland, we try to make the difference between refugees and immigrants. Indeed we are dealing with a refugee wave, who are fleeing from the war zones and, on the other hand, we have the immigrants who are coming in search for a job and for social benefits. Concerning the refugees, we’ll observe the international law (…) The condition is that they can be checked up and identified and provided they want to come,“ minister Waszczykowski told a joint press conference with the Romanian counterpart, Lazăr Comănescu.
However, he mentioned that Poland cannot receive too many immigrants at this moment.
“We sent two million citizens in Europe. They left in search for a job and we still have 1.5 million Poles looking for a job. Subsequently we cannot have more people coming to us to search for a job. A third aspect is that about 1 million people from Ukraine are already in Poland. So, we are solidary with those in need (…),” the Polish FM added.
Witold Waszczykowski paid a visit to Romania on Monday and signed the 2016-2020 Action Plan of the Romanian-Polish Strategic Partnership.
The two foreign affairs ministers said that before signing of the document, they discussed about the stage of the bilateral relationships, the situation of the regional security, with reference to Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, the risks regarding the NATO and EU’s southern flank, as well as the EU’s domestic issues.
Referring to the NATO summit hosted by Warsaw next year, Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister, Lazăr Comănescu stated that strengthening of the NATO presence in the region is mandatory, while it is a strictly defensive presence. “I have talked with Mr. Minister (…) about the need to consolidate, to guarantee a more robust presence of the Alliance in this region, a presence with a clearly defensive character and which aims at strengthening security in our area and in our neighbourhood,” Comănescu said.