Poland, as one of the last EU member states, asked the European Commission for assistance in evacuating its citizens from the Middle East only on Friday. Other countries have been joining the EU mechanism since Tuesday. There was no point in activating it earlier – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained in a conversation with Niezalezna.pl. After the delayed evacuation process, the ministry now states that “people who wanted to return have, to a large extent, already returned.”
On March 3, the first three countries officially requested EU support in organizing evacuation flights. These included Austria, Slovakia, and Italy. On March 4, Romania, among others, joined the operation. On March 5, according to an official statement from the European Commission, the mechanism was already active for 10 member states: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, and Slovakia. On March 6, the group expanded again, including Poland and Lithuania.
Under this cooperation, the EU Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) coordinates flights, and the European Commission may reimburse up to 75 percent of transport costs, provided that at least 30 percent of the seats on the aircraft are offered to citizens of other EU countries.
Why did Poland join the mechanism so late?
“Activating this mechanism means that some seats on our aircraft must be filled by people from other countries participating in it. In our case, the decision was made that our own citizens are the priority and that we must help them first. When we saw that greater capacity was becoming available, the decision was made that the mechanism could be activated. We joined it on Friday. There was no point in activating it earlier,”
said Maciej Wewiór, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement to Niezalezna.pl.
MFA: “Demand is falling”
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the problem of evacuating Polish citizens is gradually diminishing.
About 800 people a day had been calling the hotline launched by the MFA in connection with the situation in the Middle East. Now, as the spokesperson told Niezalezna.pl, there are about 100 calls per day.
“Demand has clearly decreased. This results from the fact that more than 8,000 citizens have already returned to Poland from the most threatened areas alone. Every day, about 1,000 citizens are leaving those areas,”
he said.
Niezależna portal asked for a breakdown: how many Poles returned to the country on their own, how many through government-organized transport, and how many under the joint EU evacuation mechanism. The ministry does not have “hard” data on this.
“First of all, there are commercial flights. Our role is to ensure that as many of them as possible operate to Poland. Currently, Arab airlines are flying to the Middle East; no European airlines are doing so. Diplomatically, we are working to ensure there are flights to Poland. This was the purpose of talks with the foreign ministers of Armenia and the United Arab Emirates. There is no single figure showing how many Poles returned under each formula. We count direct flights to Poland,”
Wewiór told Niezalezna.pl.
He added that many people registered in the Odyseusz system do not want to be evacuated. Residents also register in the system.
“In every country, the security situation is different and constantly changing. In Dubai, we recommend waiting because the airspace there is reopening. Much of the military activity has shifted from the UAE to Qatar, Kuwait, or Bahrain. In Qatar, it was safer to leave than to wait. Therefore, in cooperation with the Qatari services, we decided to transport our 300 citizens by bus to Riyadh. From there, they returned to Poland on three planes arranged by us,”
said the spokesperson.
From Dubai, seven buses carrying Poles, mainly those with medical problems, departed on Monday, he reported. During the night, another 300 people are expected to return to Poland from that direction.
LOT is flying, but not for free. It’s not a “low-cost” airline
The state carrier LOT organized additional paid connections, mainly to eastern Asia, to countries such as Sri Lanka and Thailand.
“There are no military operations there. There is no need for a free evacuation at the state’s expense. LOT is offering this at attractive prices,” said the MFA spokesperson. However, he noted that Poland’s national carrier is not a “low-cost” airline.
During Saturday’s press conference, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski appealed to budget airlines.
“We demand that low-cost airlines also take responsibility for their passengers, both those operating from Poland and those operating from the Middle East,” he said. So far, these appeals have had no effect.
“We see that the need for special connections is decreasing. People who wanted to return have already mostly returned,”
the MFA spokesperson stated.
People are being thrown out of hotels. Nothing can be done
Niezalezna.pl described correspondence between a Polish tourist and a diplomatic mission in the United Arab Emirates.
“I am staying in Dubai. My return flight was scheduled for March 3; now I supposedly have a flight on March 10. We do not have the funds to extend our stay. According to information on the embassy’s Facebook page, hotels in Dubai are obliged to extend stays at the expense of the UAE Ministry of Culture and Tourism, but hotels say they know nothing about it and demand payment or throw us out of the hotel!”
the message reads.
The author adds that he is asking for help and emphasizes that he cannot get through to the embassy by phone. In response, the mission essentially threw up its hands.
“Sir, as a mission, we received a document with guidelines from the Emirati government for the hotel industry. If a hotel does not follow these guidelines, there is nothing we, as an embassy, can do about it,”
reads the message sent by the mission. The embassy referred the Polish tourist to the Department of Tourism in Dubai.
Niezależna.pl asked the MFA spokesperson how such a situation could occur. It turns out there was no other option, and hotels cannot be forced to comply.
“I am curious what else the embassy should have done? There is a declaration from the United Arab Emirates. Each emirate is somewhat like a separate state. There is no problem with this in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In Dubai, problems have started to appear. In theory, according to our interpretation, hotels should comply. It is hard to imagine any government forcing a hotel in Dubai to follow the UAE’s guidelines. At the governmental administrative level, we have held talks so that the internal regulations are applied both in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai,”
Wewiór said.