Most Poles don't want refugees
PR dla Zagranicy
Jo Harper
13.07.2015 08:05
Some 70 percent of Poles don’t want a mandatory obligation to take in refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
Syrian refugees. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A poll by IBRiS for the daily Rzeczpospolita shows that 36 percent are “decidedly against” the EU plan to resettle refugees. In favour were 24 percent.
"We are a xenophobic society. We were always distant not just from people from far away countries and other cultures, but also foreigners living in Poland - Roma, Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukrainians,” social psychologist prof. Janusz Czapiński said.
Poland has said it is prepared to accept 2,000 people as part of the EU plans to resettle refugees.
Deputy Interior Minister Piotr Stachańczyk said last week that Poland had offered a thousand places for refugees to be resettled from camps outside the EU and a thousand for immigrants coming across the Mediterranean to Italy and Greece.
At an informal meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg, EU countries pledged a total placement of over 20,000 people from refugee camps outside the EU. (jh)