It is wrong for the European Union to condemn Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for opposing Brussels’ migration policy, while the introduction of German border controls is condoned by EU bodies, Polish MEP Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said on Wednesday.
The left-liberal MEP, who represents the Civic Platform in the Polish government coalition, stressed that the EU cannot be allowed to “condemn Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for protesting against the EU’s migration policy and threatening to send buses full of migrants to Brussels,” while at the same time “turning a blind eye to the closure of the borders of one of the largest member states of the EU.”
On Wednesday, Sienkiewicz proposed on behalf of the Polish delegation to the EPP Group meeting that an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) be convened to discuss the introduction of German border controls.
Sienkiewicz told a Brussels correspondent of the PAP news agency that the EU should “clarify the basic facts” about the German measure. We need to clarify “the reasons for the drastic step,” including “why the German side did not inform its European partners earlier so that they could prepare in time, why the border controls were introduced for such a long period of time and what the implications of all this will be for Germany’s security,” he said.
Germany is “too important, too big an EU member state” to be able to put the matter on the agenda, especially as “there is a well-founded suspicion that the move was not caused by an extraordinary influx of refugees, but simply by political panic after the elections,” Sienkiewicz said, referring to the negative results of the German state elections in early September for the governing coalition.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday said it was unacceptable that Germany would impose or extend border controls with neighboring countries for six months starting September 16, as announced by German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser the previous day.
