Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), says it was Germany’s decision to open Europe’s borders, not Poland’s, and his countrymen should not have to pay for their neighbour’s mistakes.

“We have not opened Europe for refugees – Ms Merkel has,” the veteran conservative told public broadcaster TVP Info. “And it is Ms Merkel and Germany that have to bear the consequences, not Poland.”

In late 2015, the European Union forced through measures requiring member states to accept a share of 120,000 migrants in southern Europe – later increased to 160,000 – despite strong opposition from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.

The Civic Platform Party (PO) government, formerly led by current President of the European Council Donald Tusk, did not oppose the measures – a stance which led to the party’s landslide defeat in the parliamentary elections weeks later.

Law and Justice repudiated the migrant quotas shortly afterwards in response to the Paris terror attacks.

The party’s Minister for European Affairs said the attacks presaged “the necessity of an even deeper revision of the European policy towards the migrant crisis”, and insisted that Poland would not take any migrants without “security guarantees”.

The EU has threatened Poland with sanctions for its refusal to implement its decision, but interior minister Mariusz Błaszczak has stated that acceding to the bloc’s demands would “certainly be much worse” than any potential punishment.

Błaszczak has articulated a remarkably robust position on the migrant crisis, declaring that “the policy of multiculturalism in Western Europe is reaping a bloody harvest in the form of terrorist attacks”.

Professor Ted Malloch, widely tipped as President Donald Trump’s eventual pick for U.S. ambassador to the EU, has described the clash between Poland and the central organs of the European Union as a logical consequence of the bloc’s “top-down approach to governance, where the smaller is subsumed into or supplanted by the greater”.

In an article for Breitbart London, the professor has characterised the EU approach as “oppressive and ultimately unsustainable”, observing that “Poland knows this and support for a ‘Polexit’ from European Union oppression is on the rise”.

He added the country has made itself “great again … by being Polish”, and urged all European countries “to rise to their natural role as proud leaders by being sovereign entities”.