A presenter on the BBC’s international radio service has had a furious debate with a Polish MP after she dismissed the views of the Polish people and berated his country’s resistance to EU migrant quotas.
In a heated five-minute exchange, the BBC presenter constantly interrupted Dominik Tarczynski of the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party. She became increasingly agitated as he successfully countered her arguments and defended the democratic will of the Polish people.
She began by asking why Poland is not “honouring” an “agreement” with the European Union (EU) to take migrants from other member states.
“Well, basically because people who voted for us, they said no,” Mr. Tarczynski explains. “The previous government had this agreement and now Polish people said no, we don’t want to have this threat in Poland… and we have to respect them.”
When the presenter asks why migrants can be a threat, he explained that three of the five Islamic State Paris bombers were ‘refugees’ from Syria.
The EU also forced through a new migrant quota system in 2015, against the will of the governments and peoples of Poland and other Central European nations – including Hungary and Slovakia – meaning they must accept thousands of migrants or face punishment.
Poland has continued to challenge the legislation in the courts and has said it is prepared to face fines from the EU’s unelected executive wing, the Commission, rather than take migrants.
“Except, if you look at it from the other side, this agreement was made by Poland, not by internal Polish politics,” claimed the BBC host.
“You can see how that is being seen from outside. People will say, well look, we don’t care about bickering inside Polish politics. The country has agreed to take its fair share of asylum seekers and that’s not happening.”
“It’s not about internal politics,” Mr. Tarczynski explained. “It’s about the situation in Poland, in Europe, in the world. How many terror attacks have you had in London?”
“We had a campaign. We listened. We asked people: ‘What are your expectations?’ [The answer] was very clear: ‘We don’t want this threat’… Politicians are supposed to listen to the people, and this is what we do,” he blasted.
He also challenged the BBC’s and the EU’s insistence that all of the millions who have arrived in the continent since 2015 are ‘refugees’.
“I’m a lawyer, they are not refugees, they are immigrants,” Mr. Tarczynski said.
“There is a legal difference between refugee and immigrant. A refugee is [a] person who flees to the first safe country, not flying throughout the globe looking for [a] social and better life, so we are not talking about refugees.”