While the EU is holding on to noble principles whereby no arriving migrant may be turned away, Poland is protecting its border amid migrant pressure from Belarus, Die Welt's columnist Klaus Geiger said, as cited by Poland's dziennik.pl website.
Thus Poland is showing a more realistic stance and doing the 27-nation bloc a favour, Geiger argued, according to dziennik.pl.
"In the ideal world of EU law, every immigrant must be allowed to seek asylum in Europe and ... only when the application is rejected, can they be turned away," Geiger wrote in his column, as quoted by dziennik.pl.
"However, in the real world, whoever has reached the bloc will do everything to remain there, even if they stand no chance of receiving asylum, which is only human," he was quoted as saying.
Geiger noted in his piece that the bloc has adopted various makeshift solutions, such as border fences or, where the frontier runs along the sea, bilateral agreements with the likes of Turkey, Libya and Morocco as well as faraway Niger, dziennik.pl reported.
"These countries are being paid for stopping migrants from setting out for Europe," he said.
Yet now, as the Polish-Belarusian migrant crisis intensifies, "the European Commission and many German politicians are affording themselves the luxury of living in the ideal world," Geiger argued, as quoted by dziennik.pl.
"They have accused Poland of breaching the law by sending migrants back to Belarus and criticised Warsaw for building a border wall," Geiger wrote.
"Hasn't the EU learned the lesson" after its inaction during the 2015 migrant crisis?, he asked in his column, according to the Polish website.
Back in 2015, "the German state lost control of the situation," according to Geiger, while "anti-European forces gained popularity throughout the continent and Britain left the bloc."
"Poland has now taken the matter of protecting its eastern border into its own hands," Geiger wrote, as quoted by dziennik.pl.
"Would it be more humanitarian to do nothing and keep letting people become pawns in the perfidious game being played by the Belarus dictator?," he argued.
"The EU should understand that Poland is doing it a favour - because it is acting realistically," Geiger was also quoted as saying.
(pm/gs)
Source: dziennik.pl