Poland had agreed to receive 7.000 refugees, as part of the deal between the EU and Turkey. However, Beata Szydlo said on Wednesday that she does “not see any possibility for the refugees to come to Poland” according to Polish broadcaster Superstacja. 

The initial plan was to admit 400 refugees in 2016 and the rest 6.600 over the next three years. The terrorist attacks in Brussels might as well be the pretext the Polish government needed to get out of a rather unpleasant agreement.
Racist sentiment has been on the rise in Poland, where last year thousands of Poles demonstrated across the country against refugees. Even the country’s President Andrzej Duda in a controversial statement said the government should take steps to protect its citizens from refugees bringing in “possible epidemics”. 
Duda is a member of the Law and Justice party, Poland’s biggest, right wing, national-conservative and mildly euroskeptical political party. Far-right nationalist movements such as the National Radical Camp have also been increasing their influence. 

At the same time, Finland announced that it has signed a bilateral agreement with Russia which bans migrants and refugees from crossing the border of the two states, in order to close the Arctic route towards the Schengen Area.
Only Finnish, Russian and Belarusian citizens and their families will be allowed to cross at the Salla and Raja-Jooseppi entry points for the next six months, according to Reuters. “The aim of this restriction is to prevent organized illegal immigration” the Finnish President’s office said in a statement. The agreement will come into effect as soon as the two states resolve technical details in order to ratify it.
For refugees and migrants, the 833 mile Arctic border offers an alternative route, as weather warms and southern routes become increasingly restricted. About 1.000 refugees, mostly Afghans and Syrians, entered EU via Salla and Raja-Jooseppi in the first two months of 2016, compared to only 700 in 2015. Finland, which has a population of about 5.4 million citizens, received around 32.000 asylum seekers last year.

Norway was the first state to restrict access trough the arctic route last December. About 5.000 refugees had entered the EU through its borders in 2015, until Norway announced it would no longer accept legally working immigrants in Russia or people crossing it, proceeding to their refoulement. After the strong criticism it received for abandoning migrants and refugees in polar temperatures in the Russian part of the arctic, Norway refrained from this practice.