It is not right for the European Union to condemn Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for opposing Brussels’ migration policy, while turning a blind eye to Germany’s introduction of border controls, said Polish MEP Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz on Wednesday. Sienkiewicz, who represents the Civic Platform, the leading party in Poland’s governing coalition, in the European Parliament, proposed at Wednesday’s European People’s Party (EPP) meeting, on behalf of the Polish delegation, that an extraordinary meeting of the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE) be convened due to Germany’s introduction of border controls.
He outlined several questions to be clarified: “What were the drastic steps’ reasons, why did the German side not inform its European partners earlier to allow for timely preparation, why were the border controls introduced for such a long period, and what will be the significance of all this for Germany’s security?” Sienkiewicz said.
Germany is “too important, too large an EU member state” to allow this issue to go unnoticed, especially given the “well-founded suspicion that the step was not caused by an extraordinary influx of refugees, but simply by post-election political panic,” Sienkiewicz noted, referring to the unfavorable results for the government coalition in the early September German state elections.
The MEP emphasized that it is unacceptable for the EU “to condemn Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Prime Minister, for protesting against the EU’s migration policy and threatening to send buses full of migrants to Brussels,” while “turning a blind eye to one of the largest member states closing its borders.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday called it unacceptable for Germany – according to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s announcement the previous day – to introduce or extend border controls with neighboring countries for six months from September 16.
Translated and edited by L. Earth
