Poland has not entered into any agreement about repatriating asylum seekers, Foreign Ministry spokesman said after a German government document was circulated saying Warsaw was one of 14 governments that had indicated it would be prepared to do so. "There are no any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary," Artur Lompart, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters.
In a document sent to the leaders of her coalition partners and seen by Reuters, German Chancellor Angela Merkel listed 14 EU countries, including some of those most outspoken in their opposition to her open-door refugee policy, which had indicated they were prepared to take back migrants.
However, Hungary and Poland denied they had agreed to any deal.
The dispute over how to handle migration has plunged Merkel's three-month-old "grand coalition" into crisis and weakened the conservative leader, who has served for nearly 13 years, forcing German officials to scramble to try to reach deals with individual EU members.
The agreements, hammered out during through-the-night talks at an EU summit in Brussels, would speed up the process of repatriating refugees whose presence in the EU was first recorded in those 14 countries.
Under a separate deal with Greece and Spain, Berlin agreed to take refugees in the two countries who wanted to be reunited with family members already in Germany. In return, the two countries will take from Germany some people regarded as migrants, not refugees.
The document also proposed establishing reception centres in Germany for refugees arriving at the border with Austria who had earlier been recorded entering another European country, allowing them to be subjected to an accelerated asylum assessment process.
The country-by-country agreements or statements of intent are separate from the broader summit conclusion to share out refugees arriving in the bloc on a voluntary basis and create "controlled centres" inside the EU to process asylum requests.
But substantial confusion remained over what the 14 countries had agreed to.
"No such deal has been reached," Hungary's government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said when asked about the document, which says the 14 countries "consented on a political level" to making such an agreement.
Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said: "There are no any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries.”
Under the EU's Dublin convention, largely overlooked since Merkel's 2015 decision to open Germany's borders, asylum seekers must lodge their requests in the first EU country they set foot in.
"It is impossible for a migrant to enter Hungary without entering another EU member earlier," Kovacs added, saying this meant any agreement would be impossible.
Hungary has an external border with Serbia, but most asylum seekers who reach the country first entered the EU in Greece.
Handelsblatt newspaper also reported that a Czech government spokeswoman had also denied entering such an agreement.
The other countries named in the document circulated in Berlin are Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24, Reuters, PAP, European Union
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: European Union