Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Fabrice Leggeri, former head of the EU border agency Frontex and current lead candidate for the right-wing National Rally (RN) party participated in a public discussion held in the European Parliament on Tuesday.
Morawiecki pointed out that Europe currently has three main objectives: ensuring security, maintaining the welfare state with robust economic growth, and implementing ‘costly’ climate policies. He emphasized that
migration is a crucial factor for both continental security and the preservation of the welfare state.
‘In this context, it is clear that the new migration package will not work. It will cause massive turbulence, essentially representing the second version of the ‘welcome culture’’,’ he remarked.
Morawiecki stressed that Poland refused to accept agricultural products from Ukrainian oligarchs because they destabilize the internal Polish agricultural market. He noted that this decision was important to maintain public support for the Ukrainian cause. ‘I believe that this is a very valuable sector, and we must maintain it within the European Union. The agricultural sector brings added value not only in economic terms but also in something much more important,’ he emphasized.
Regarding EU green policies, he criticized recent regulations, stating that they are dangerous for lower or average-income member states and their populations, as well as for competitiveness. ‘We are responsible for eight or nine percent of total emissions in Europe. So even if we reduce emissions by ten percent, at the same time in China they are opening coal mines and undoing all the efforts,’ he pointed out. He described this situation for Europe as a ‘negative-sum game’ because it could jeopardize the competitiveness of the industry. ‘The upcoming European elections are critically important for several reasons, including stopping this madness, because we cannot be prisoners of the ideological fantasies of Brussels officials,’ Morawiecki underscored.
Fabrice Leggeri, former head of Frontex and lead candidate for the RN party, highlighted during the discussion that the European Commission has turned the agency into a kind of ‘Trojan horse’ to monitor what member states and national authorities are doing to curb illegal migration and to counterbalance measures aimed at protecting borders. He added that civil society organizations protecting migrants’ rights operate under a ‘false narrative’ that preventing illegal border crossings by migrants is ‘contrary to the law’. He believes that the new migration pact ‘assumes the acceptance of migrants landing in Europe’.
Recalling his time as executive director of Frontex, Leggeri said
he wanted rescued migrants to be landed in third countries, but this met with fierce resistance from Brussels.
‘They made a reputational issue out of this, saying migrants had to be brought to Europe, despite the fact that they were rescued near North African shores,’ he said.
Leggeri drew a symbolic parallel between EU agriculture and migration. ‘The European Commission says about migration that there is no reason to worry, we create free movement within the EU, but there is an external border. They say the same about trade or agriculture. However, the so-called external border is gradually being dismantled by the commission,’ Fabrice Leggeri opined.
Recently, the EU adopted the migration pact despite protests from several member states. Hungary strongly opposes the pact, as we reported in detail in earlier articles.
Related articles:
