Polish province refuses to establish EU-funded migrant integration centres

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

The head of the local assembly in Małopolska, a province in southern Poland, has announced that the region will not participate in government plans to establish EU-funded integration centres for immigrants.

The decision comes amid growing controversy around the centres, 49 of which are meant to be established around Poland and some of which are already operating, including in Małopolska. Concerns about them have been stirred up in particular by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main opposition party.

However, critics accuse PiS of misrepresenting the purpose of the centres, which are intended to help existing immigrants, not to bring in (or house) new ones. They also note that the idea for the centres arose and was first implemented when PiS itself was in power.

“Małopolska will not participate in the call organised by the interior ministry as part of the implementation of integration centres for foreigners,” declared Łukasz Smółka, a PiS politician who is the head of the provincial assembly in Małopolska, this week.

His decision was supported by PiS’s national spokesman, Rafał Bochenek, who said that he “does not see the need to create such centres” and declared that “the idea suggested by [interior minister Tomasz] Siemoniak [to establish them] will not be implemented”.

Smółka also received support from the far-right Confederation (Konfereracja), another opposition party, one of whose representatives, Jędrzej Dziadosz, told broadcaster TVP that “Poles are afraid” the integration centres are “a kind of prelude…to the EU relocating illegal immigrants to Poland”.

However, the deputy mayor of Kraków, Stanisław Kracik, who hails from Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), emphasises that the centres are intended to help existing migrants who are in Poland legally.

Such centres “should be established where there is the need” for them, he told TVP. Immigrants “need to have these language services or other [services] where they live”.

The deputy governor of Małpolska, Ryszard Śmiałek, who hails from The Left (Lewica), another member of the national ruling coalition, also argues that the centres are necessary and says that, by rejecting them, the province will lose funds intended to help with the integration of migrants.

EU-funded integration centres have, in fact, already been established in Małopolska, including one in the provincial capital, Kraków, as well as in Nowy Sącz, Tarnów and Oświęcim, a spokeswoman for the provincial labour office told local news outlet Gazeta Krakowska.

The newspaper visited the facility in Kraków, which it reports provides Polish language courses, vocational training, intercultural assistance and psychological support for immigrants legally residing in the province.

The centre does not provide any housing for migrants, and is certainly not a “camp for illegal immigrants”, as some critics have tried to claim, notes the newspaper. (Poland does have centres for housing asylum seekers, which have also recently caused controversy, but those are completely separate.)

Last October, the European Commission announced that Poland would establish 49 new “integration centres for foreigners” across the country to “provide standardised services to newly arrived migrants and serve as platforms for cooperation between local authorities, the government and NGOs”.

The EU-funded facilities will offer, among other things, courses in the Polish language and in adaptation, information and advisory points, psychological care, and various forms of legal assistance, including to prevent domestic violence and human trafficking.

Although last year’s developments came under the current government, a coalition ranging from left to centre-right which took office in December 2023, the idea for the integration centres was  developed and piloted under the former PiS government, which ruled from 2015 to 2023.

During PiS’s time in power, Poland experienced immigration at levels unprecedented in the country’s history and among the highest in the EU. For the last seven years running, it has issued more first residence permits to immigrants from outside the EU than has any other member state.

The majority of those who have arrived are from Ukraine, with large numbers from other former Soviet states such as Belarus and Georgia. But there are also growing numbers of migrants from outside Europe, including India, Colombia and Uzbekistan.

During the current campaign for next month’s presidential elections, immigration has become a central issue. The current government has introduced a tough new immigration strategy, including suspending the right to claim asylum in certain cases. It accuses PiS of allowing uncontrolled immigration when it was in power.

However, PiS claims that it is the current ruling coalition, led by Donald Tusk, that is soft on the issue. It accuses the government in particular of allowing other EU countries, especially Germany, to send illegal immigrants to Poland (although such transfers also took place when PiS was in power).

That political atmosphere has resulted in a backlash against the planned integration centres in various parts of Poland. In Suwałki, a city of 70,000 people in northeast Poland, local residents have launched a petition against a planned centre and the city council passed a resolution opposing it.

Last week, PiS deputy leader and former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited Suwałki to declare that “we do not want illegal Muslim migrants who change the culture, national identity and violate the safety of our cities and streets”.

Meanwhile, in Żyrardów, a town of 40,000 in central Poland, local Confederation politicians this week submitted a motion calling for public consultations to be held on the establishment of an integration centre, declaring that “we do not want culturally alien immigrants in our city”.

On Thursday, in Częstochowa, a large city in southern Poland, PiS councillors submitted a resolution calling on the mayor to “use all available legal methods to prevent the establishment of the Foreigners’ Integration Centre in Częstochowa or any centres for immigrants illegally crossing the border”.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Piotr Skornicki / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.