Polish government steps up anti-migrant rhetoric as elections approach

In an effort to legitimize its anti-migrant agenda, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is organizing a national referendum the same day as the national elections on October 15. The government passed a law in August in the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, to make this referendum possible.

Two of the four referendum questions focus on the government’s anti-migrant policies, asking the public loaded questions about whether they want to admit “illegal immigrants” from the Middle East and North Africa as “imposed” by the government . EU Migration Pact, and if they want to dismantle the barrier on the border with Belarus. The two remaining issues concern the sale of public assets to foreign entities and raising the retirement age.

The explanatory annex which accompanies the referendum contains misleading information designed to encourage citizens to vote in favor of the government’s anti-migrant agenda. It deliberately omits the fact that the EU migration pact does not oblige any country to accept relocated migrants, and that countries can choose not to make a “solidarity” payment for each migrant they refuse to relocate. More importantly, the pact offers an exception for countries subject to migration pressure, like Polanddue to the millions of Ukrainian refugees in the country.

Xenophobic rhetoricparticularly around migrants crossing the Belarusian border, was at the heart of the political message of the ruling Law and Justice party. It is therefore not surprising that the party held the referendum on the day of the national elections.

This referendum is reminiscent of the decision of the Hungarian government anti-LGBT referendumheld on their national election day in April 2022. This referendum was declared invalid, in part due to the success of the referendum. civil society campaign encouraging people to invalidate their ballots. In Poland, civil society is engaged in a similar approach campaign calling on citizens to boycott the referendum.

The Polish government’s charged, anti-migrant referendum, presented on the basis of blatantly false information, underlines why concerted EU action – notably under Article 7 of the European Treaty – is vital to tackling the threat to EU values ​​posed by the weakening of the rule of law in Poland. , regardless of the outcome of the election.