Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło has said that the European Union’s migration policy has proved to be a failure, adding that her country will not be “blackmailed” into taking in refugees.

Speaking after a meeting in Warsaw with her counterparts from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Szydło slammed EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos for telling the bloc’s interior ministers that there should be "no more excuses" and "no more talk about relocation, but delivery."

Szydło also referred to a statement by the German interior minister, who said that the European Commission “must ensure the law [on refugees] is respected and has the tools to do so.”

Szydło said such statements are “a misunderstanding and a blackmail attempt”.

“The Visegrad group, including Poland, will never agree to blackmail and will not agree to such terms being dictated to them,” she said.

In September 2015, EU leaders decided that each country would accept a number of asylum seekers over two years to alleviate the pressure on Greece and Italy, which have seen a flood of asylum seekers from the Middle East.

EU leaders decided to relocate a total of about 100,000 refugees of more than two million people who arrived in Europe since 2015.

However, only 14,000 migrants from refugee camps in countries along the Mediterranean coast have been relocated in the EU. Poland, which had been assigned 6,200 refugees, has not taken in any of them.

In an interview with Polish Radio, Polish deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin said: “Resolving the problem is based on eliminating the source of the problem, that is bringing peace to the Middle East.”

(mk/pk)