Muslim migrants are destroying European culture, says Poland’s ex-PM

Poland’s former prime minister has warned European culture is being “destroyed” by Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

Mateusz Morawiecki, who served as Poland’s prime minister from 2017 until the beginning of this month, said: “We were very open to war refugees from Ukraine when the need was there… We have opened our hearts and our gates for all refugees.

“But this is very much different from the huge [amounts of] Muslim migrants from the Middle East who are coming to Germany and France and other countries and who want to change the culture of those countries, those nations.

“I am clearly opposed to such attempts. I’m admiring [of] French culture, Spanish culture and British culture, but I also admire my Polish culture and I want to preserve it, I want to nurture it.

“I don’t want it to be destroyed by the Muslim migrants coming from the Middle East or from Africa.”

The former Polish PM said Ukrainian refugees were “culturally very similar to Poles” and had behaved “very well” since arriving; an estimated one million Ukrainian refugees currently reside in Poland.

According to data from the European Commission, there were more than 230,000 first-time asylum applicants to Europe from the Middle East and Africa in 2022.

One million illegal citizens

The commission also estimates over one million non-EU citizens were illegally present in the bloc last year.

Mr Morawiecki condemned the EU’s latest migration pact, agreed by Brussels on Dec 20, which would relocate migrants across the continent and impose fines on countries who refuse to accept their share of migrant quotas.

The pact aims to relieve pressure on southern border countries by creating new detention centres, speeding up the vetting of illegal migrants and accelerating the deportation process for rejected asylum seekers.

Following elections in October, earlier this month Mr Morawiecki’s conservative Law and Justice Party was removed from government and replaced by a three-party coalition, consisting of the liberal Civic Coalition, the New Left and agrarian Third Way, all led by prime minister Donald Tusk.

The previous Polish government fought bitterly against the EU’s migration plans, in particular the clause that would relocate migrants from border countries to other EU member states.

Mr Morawiecki described illegal migration as a long-term “threat” to European civilisation and said: “We do not agree on any form of compulsory distribution of migrants across member states. We do not agree to compulsory distribution of migrants into Poland specifically, of course, or paying for not accepting those migrants.

“This is one of the biggest threats going forward for the European Union because I think that accepting one or two million illegal migrants can be the beginning of a huge wave that can pose a very serious threat to the whole of the European Union, and the stability of the European Union, and for the security of the European Union.”