WARSAW — Poland may not make an appearance at next week’s informal EU summit in Malta on dealing with the migration crisis because it is in the midst of a post-election government transition.
The summit is set for November 12, but that is that same day that Andrzej Duda, Poland’s president, set for swearing in a new parliament following October 25 elections. That’s also the time that Ewa Kopacz, the outgoing prime minister, will have to resign.
The issue is a potential embarrassment for Warsaw. Kopacz strongly resisted the European Commission’s plan to give each EU country a quota to allocate asylum-seekers. She buckled in the end and agreed that Poland would accept about 7,500 of the 160,000 refugees being redistributed around Europe.
However, the Law and Justice party, which defeated Kopacz’s Civic Platform in the election, is strongly opposed to accepting refugees from the Middle East.
With more than 200,000 refugees landing in Europe in October, and the Commission predicting that 3 million more could arrive by 2017, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and a former Polish prime minister, called the informal gathering to get a grip on the growing crisis. The meeting is being held as a postscript to a larger summit with European and African leaders on migration.
“If we are to avoid the worst we must speed up our actions,” Tusk said in the invitation.
But that doesn’t match Poland’s internal political calendar.
Kopacz intends to be in the parliament to hand in her resignation. Beata Szydło, the prime ministerial candidate for Law and Justice, could replace her almost immediately.
“You could imagine a situation where an hour later a new government is sworn in. We can’t take part in the summit,” Cezary Tomczyk, spokesman for the outgoing government, told Polish radio on Friday morning.
Law and Justice officials insisted that there is no problem at all.
Witold Waszczykowski, a possible candidate to become foreign minister, downplayed the importance of the summit as a “brain storm” that isn’t enough to deal with the crisis, and suggested on Polish radio that Tusk scheduled the event on purpose to create problems for Poland’s government transition.
He proposed that an ambassador be delegated to represent Poland.
Tomczyk in turn said Poland could only be represented by a prime minister or a president, but Małgorzata Sadurska, Duda’s chief of staff, said in a radio interview that the president would be too busy that day with the first session of parliament.
“An empty chair will be the symbol of Polish diplomacy at this summit,” Tomczyk said.