Poland has secured a long-sought exemption from the EU’s solidarity mechanism under the new migration pact, meaning it will neither be required to accept relocated migrants nor to pay financial compensation in lieu of relocations. The decision was announced in Brussels by Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński, who said EU interior ministers had given their preliminary approval to the European Commission’s plan, explicitly including a carve-out for Poland.
“Poland is exempt from any relocation mechanism, and exempt from any costs associated with it. In this respect, it seems we have achieved everything we wanted,” Kierwiński told reporters after the meeting. Under the general rules of the solidarity mechanism, member states can choose between taking in asylum seekers from front-line countries, paying 20,000 euros for each person they decline to accept, or providing operational support such as border personnel and equipment. The migration pact also foresees exemptions for states facing particularly difficult migration circumstances. According to Warsaw, this clause has now been applied to Poland.
The debate among EU interior ministers was described as intense and at times heated, revealing sharp differences between national priorities. Kierwiński admitted that several southern member states, which continue to receive the bulk of irregular arrivals by sea, expressed dissatisfaction with the compromise. Their criticism, he argued, is indirectly a measure of how far Poland has come diplomatically, moving from being portrayed as an obstructionist on migration to being granted special treatment within an agreed framework.
For the Polish government, the exemption is politically significant. Both Prime Minister Karol Nawrocki and the ruling coalition had pledged that Poland would not be forced to accept compulsory migrant quotas under the new EU rules. Shortly after the Brussels meeting, the prime minister wrote on X that Poland had been released from the mechanism “as promised”, presenting the outcome as the fulfilment of a key electoral commitment.
The decision comes against the backdrop of heightened security concerns and a broader debate on border protection. In recent weeks, Warsaw has unveiled plans such as “Operation Horizon”, a project to deploy thousands of soldiers to guard critical infrastructure following acts of sabotage on the rail network. Against this security-focused narrative, avoiding binding relocation obligations to frontline states in the Mediterranean is being framed by the government as another way of keeping control over who enters Polish territory.
At the same time, the migration pact still imposes obligations on the EU collectively, and the solidarity mechanism is designed to ensure that pressure on southern states is not borne by them alone. Poland’s exemption therefore raises questions about how the burden will be shared in practice and whether other states will seek similar treatment. For now, however, Warsaw has scored a clear tactical success: it has stayed inside a common European framework on migration while being allowed to opt out of its most politically sensitive element.
How sustainable that arrangement will be in the longer term remains to be seen. Southern member states may push for further adjustments or additional forms of support to compensate for what they see as a lack of solidarity from partners that are shielded from relocations. For the moment, though, Poland’s government can point to a concrete decision in Brussels and argue to its domestic audience that it has defended national red lines while remaining an active participant in EU negotiations.
