Sejm Marshal Włodzimierz Czarzasty made the remarks following the IX Polish-Spanish Parliamentary Forum, held at the Senate building and concluded with a joint document reaffirming both countries' commitment to deeper bilateral cooperation.
"Imagine a country that accepts half a million migrants and treats those people as an opportunity, not a threat", Czarzasty said. "It is possible to make budget revenues and the country's development greater as a result. That is the smart policy Spain is showing how to implement — there is really something to learn from".
Spanish Congress President Francina Armengol Socias, who outlined Madrid's migration management model during the talks, echoed the sentiment. "Migration is an opportunity for us — legal migration that allows our country to grow, develop the economy, demographics and also human rights values", she said. "Spain's economic progress would not have been possible without migration".
Spanish Senate President Pedro Rollan said the forum's joint document called for a "balanced approach to migration and cooperation with third countries" as a tool to combat organized crime. "We want legal, well-organized migration in order to avoid the negative scenarios of xenophobia and populism", he said.
Senate Marshal Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska thanked the Spanish side for acknowledging Poland's role in alerting Europe to the Russian threat. "Poland and Spain are separated by thousands of kilometers, but we remain close in our view of security challenges", she said.
Czarzasty stressed the shared Polish-Spanish position on Ukraine. "There is no free and independent EU, no free Poland — or Spain, thousands of kilometers away — without a free, independent Ukraine", he said, adding that a united European Union carried far greater weight on the world stage than its members acting alone.
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Source: PAP