Poland against quotas but open to more migrants

(WARSAW) - Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said Thursday she was against any quota plan to share migrants across the 28-member European Union but was open to raising the numbers Warsaw took in.

The EU has been overwhelmed by the massive crisis as hundreds of thousands of people try to reach the bloc by sea and land after fleeing conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

"We're against automatic quotas, but we're willing to discuss the scale of our involvement on a voluntary basis," Kopacz said.

EU partners, especially Germany, have piled pressure on the country of 38 million people to accept more than the 2,200 to which it had initially agreed.

She spoke as EU President Donald Tusk -- a former Polish premier from Kopacz's party -- on Thursday urged member states to take in at least 100,000 refugees to ease the pressure on frontline nations.

Kopacz said a distinction had to be made between economic migrants who come to the EU to improve their quality of life and those fleeing war and mortal danger.

"We're unable to take in economic migrants," but "we have the moral obligation to look after those migrants who no longer have anywhere to return to," she said, adding that making such a distinction would reduce the influx at EU borders.

Like Poland, other largely homogenous countries in Eastern Europe have been reluctant to accept refugees, which has prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Western officials to take them to task.

Poland's border guards say they have yet to notice an influx of migrants arriving on its doorstep from Iraq or Syria.