The standoff is on. “I will not consent to the implementation of the pact on migration and asylum in Poland”, writes Polish President Karol Nawrocki in a letter sent this Thursday, October 9 to Ursula von der Leyen. Elected last August, the conservative promised during his campaign to directly oppose the system adopted by the European Union to better distribute the reception of asylum seekers. The reaction did not take long in Budapest…
Europe is shifting: President @NawrockiKn refuses to implement the migration pact in Poland.
We refuse as well. Now there are two of us. If a third joins, that’s already a rebellion.
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) October 9, 2025
“Europe is turning upside down: President Nawrocki refuses to implement the migration pact in Poland. We refuse it too. There are now two of us. If a third joins us, it will already be a rebellion,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on X.
If he does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally withdraw his country from the pact, recalls Euractiv, the Polish president asserts, his country will not participate in the compulsory relocation mechanism for migrants. Irregular migration is a European problem, he acknowledges in this letter, but the answer, according to him, must be found at the source, by targeting smugglers and strengthening security at external borders.
An unpopular European treaty
A transpartisan rejection, which pro-European Prime Minister Donald Tusk himself had endorsed earlier in the year, declaring that Warsaw would not apply “no pact” which would force Poland to welcome migrants identified elsewhere in Europe. And popular with the Poles – according to an Opinion24 survey carried out for RMF FM, 75% of them are opposed to Poland welcoming migrants within the framework of the solidarity mechanism. Only one in five respondents said they were in favor of welcoming migrants.
Karol Nawrocki nevertheless assures that he is ready to cooperate with his partners on other aspects: information sharing, joint operations, technical assistance to countries under migratory pressure. But he firmly rejects any constraint imposed by Brussels, thus joining the line of Hungary, which is demanding a derogation in order not to apply the European treaty adopted in May 2024. Budapest, hostile to welcoming asylum seekers in the name of defending a Europe “Christian”has been condemned on several occasions by European justice for non-compliance with EU law.
