“No half measures”: Poland's view on the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and its (non-)implementation

• In Event: The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Why Criminologists Should Care? (I)

Abstract

The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, adopted in May 2024, has been criticised for prioritising security and deterrence over humanitarianism (e.g. Stępka, 2023). Despite its crisis response mechanisms, the Polish government rejected the Pact as insufficiently stringent and voted against its full adoption. In the following months, it not only refused to prepare for its implementation, but also announced that it would not participate in solidarity mechanisms and introduced its own policy to counter the instrumentalisation of migration at the eastern border. In the draft law of December 2024, the government provided for the possibility of temporarily and territorially suspending access to the asylum procedure if instrumentalisation is detected. Needless to say, the bill was heavily criticised by national and international actors defending migrants' rights. However, this did not prevent parliamentary work on the bill from continuing.
This paper examines the measures proposed by the Polish government and explores why the Pact's provisions were dismissed as inadequate 'half-measures' and 'unfair solidarity'. Rather than looking at the political debates, it aims to review the changing national legislation and its practical outcomes. It also reflects on the question of whether the law amendments change the policy towards asylum seekers at the border or preserve the state of affairs observed for a decade, in which asylum seekers (with some exceptions) are a suspect community (Łodziński 2019). All in all, the paper sheds light on the country's evolving migration governance and its implications for broader European asylum and migration debates.

Authors

• Monika Szulecka, Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences

• Witold Klaus, Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences