The populist, nationalist party that governs it Poland wants to organize referendum on the reception issue refugeesfollowing the agreement reached by EU countries on the reform of the asylum system, its president, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said today.

Under the recent, preliminary agreement, EU countries that refuse to accept refugees will be obliged to pay 20,000 euros for each person they refuse to host. The money will go into a fund, managed by Brussels.

Poland and Hungary voted against this arrangement and the right-wing government in Warsaw condemned the refugee resettlement plan. “We do not agree and neither do the Polish people and this should be the subject of a referendum (…) We will organize this referendum,” said Kaczynski, the head of the Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Poland is currently home to more than a million Ukrainian refugees who fled their country after the Russian invasion in February 2022. But the government has for years opposed the resettlement of refugees from Greece or Italy. “This is not an immigration pact, it is a decree that aims to change European culture,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told parliament. “Here is the Sejm (lower house of Poland) and not the Bundestag and we have the right and the obligation to vote for the interest of Poland. We Poles know what compassion and solidarity means. No one will teach us solidarity, and especially not the Germans.”

Parliamentary elections will be held in Poland in the autumn, and immigration is expected to be one of the main issues of the parties’ election campaign.