BERLIN (Reuters) – Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski on Monday criticised the European Commission’s handling of last year’s migrant crisis, saying that Brussels had exacerbated the problems rather than offering real solutions.
The EU took “hasty, irresponsible and not-fully thought through steps” in response to a massive influx of refugees from Iraq, Syria and other war-torn regions, Waszczykowski said at a news conference with his German and French counterparts.
His comments came a day after Germany, Poland and France agreed to bridge their differences over issues such as migration and shore up support for the EU by reinvigorating the Weimar Triangle, a trilateral group founded after the end of the Cold War.
Waszczykowski has been relentless in his critique of the European Union’s executive leadership and blames its policies for Britain’s vote to leave the bloc.
Poland’s euro sceptic ruling party (PiS) is at loggerheads with Brussels over issues including its constitutional court, migrant policy, climate policy and logging in ancient forests.
Waszczykowski also criticised other EU countries for not acting to secure the external borders of the EU and said the practice had been tolerated for years.
“We are now discovering with surprise that there are double standards in the European migration policy,” he said.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Dominic Evans)