WARSAW (Reuters) – Islamic militants will be among migrants heading for Europe as a result of the conflict in Israel, Poland’s prime minister said on Thursday, as his governing party burnishes its anti-immigrant credentials in the run-up to a national election.
The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party has put migration at the heart of its campaign to win a third term in office on Oct. 15.
“In this great wave of migration there will be Islamic fighters, terrorists, thousands of young men will migrate to Europe,” Mateusz Morawiecki told a press conference.
Poland – along with neighbouring Hungary – has opposed a European Union deal for a quota system between member states for relocating irregular migrants, who have been reaching Europe in increasing numbers.
Voters will be asked to give their views on that system in a referendum being run in parallel with the election.
PiS has cast the election as a choice between a government determined to stop illegal migration and an opposition that would demolish a fence on the border with Belarus and accept migrant quotas.
Opposition parties say they would not demolish the fence while the European Commission has rejected Warsaw’s claim that it would be forced to take in more migrants under the new rules, saying Poland would be exempt due to the large number of Ukrainian refugees in the country.
The opposition has also questioned whether PiS is as tough on migration as it claims to be, citing an increase in immigration from outside Europe during its time in office and a cash-for-visas scandal.
Opposition parties say the government was complicit in a system in which migrants received visas at an accelerated pace without proper checks after paying intermediaries.
PiS says the scale of the problem has been exaggerated and its origin dates back to the opposition’s time in power.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish,; Additional reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz; ; editing by John Stonestreet)
