Polish Premiere of the Report “Taking Back Control from Brussels: The Renationalization of EU Migration and Asylum Policies”

The struggle for control over migration policy

The Ordo Iuris Institute presented the Polish version of the report “Taking Back Control from Brussels.The Renationalization of the EU Migration and Asylum Policies..” The guests of the event were politicians and experts on European policy–Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Krzysztof Bosak, former MEPs Prof. Zdzisław Krasnodębski and Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, currently President Nawrocki’s main advisor for European affairs, the president of Ordo Iuris, Advocate Jerzy Kwaśniewski, Rodrigo Ballester, the director of the Center for European Studies at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, as well as Róbert Gönczi, an analyst at the Hungarian Institute for Migration Research and at Mathias Corvinus Collegium.

The meeting held at Warsaw’s Stańczyk Club attracted a large audience. Among the audience were, among others, Stephen Bartulica—an MEP and chairman of the Political Network for Values Political Network for Values, as well as Lorenzo Montanari, vice president for international affairs at Americans for Tax Reforms and the Tholos Foundation and Jarosław Lindenberg,former deputy minister of foreign affairs. Earlier, the publication premiered in Budapest.

The report presented yesterday discusses the possibility for European Union member states to regain greater control over migration and asylum policy without the need to adopt new EU treaties. The authors show that the key competencies concerning border protection, security, and deciding on the admission of foreigners still belong to nation-states, and that any limits on them result more from legal interpretation than from actual legal provisions.

The publication critically assesses the EU migration pact, indicating that it may facilitate mass migration and the forced relocation of migrants. The report also proposes specific legal measures that would enable EU countries to strengthen their own migration policy under existing European and international law.

The European Union has no competence in the field of migration.

Paweł Ozdoba,the president of the Stańczyk Club, and Adv. Jerzy Kwaśniewski, opened the meeting. Next, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski—a former Polish Minister for European Affairs and Member of the European Parliament, currently an adviser to the President of the Republic of Poland, took the floor. In his speech, he pointed out how migration-related processes are evolving in Europe. He also drew attention to the actual powers of states in the area of migration and asylum.

“Migration policy is not among the European Union’s exclusive or shared competencies. This is only an area, the third category of cooperation, within which the Union institutions may assist, encourage, and advise the member states, but they cannot legislate. And that is the origin of this great usurpation,” the politician emphasized.

He also warned against repeating the West’s mistakes regarding an overly liberal migration policy.

“Looking at the statistics, you can see that in most of Western Europe, immigrant communities make up a percentage in the teens, or even over twenty percent, of the population. It’s not like that here yet, but we too face the risk of an open-borders policy starting here. We will then, after a certain delay, share the same fate,” noted Saryusz-Wolski.

Next, the experts’ debate began, during which the topics described in the report were discussed. Jerzy Kwaśniewski drew attention to the authors’ proposed solutions to the problem of mass migration.

“The solutions contained in the report, in a sense, follow the proposals that we previously set out in our joint report ‘The Great Reset.’ Above all, it is the principle of flexibility, the principle of sovereignty, the principle of managing policy and law at the level of the member states rather than at the central level,” the lawyer emphasized.

Outdated tools for combating migration

Then Róbert Gönczi took the floor.

“Today we are witnessing a huge surge in migration that Europe is grappling with, and let’s not forget that we are all part of the European Union; it affects us all, and we all bear the consequences,” the analyst emphasized.

He also drew attention to the problem of numerous migrants not being registered in European countries’ systems.

“There are millions of people we can’t track down. We don’t know where they are, we don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know where they came from, and we don’t know what to do about it. This places a very significant burden on the European system, on the European Union, and it is one of the reasons why we find ourselves in a serious economic crisis,” he noted.

For his part, Rodrigo Ballester pointed out that Europe lacks adequate legal and institutional tools to combat mass migration.

“As Europeans, we are committing demographic suicide. We are a continent of old rich people, facing a continent of young, hungry, and determined people— ambitious people. We’re still trying to manage migration with hopelessly outdated tools, using conventions from a century ago. They have completely lost their meaning today. In practice, I’m talking about the Geneva Convention. This is the “sacred cow” we should get rid of, Ballester emphasized.

The West is a warning for Poland

Next, Prof. Zdzisław Krasnodębski took the floor. He compared the impact of immigration using Warsaw, Poland, and Bremen, Germany, where he lived and worked for a long time, as examples.

“How did it happen that such a process, which is suicidal, was supported by societies for years? I can tell you that I know two such cities well. One was poor and large, and people were moving away from it. It was Warsaw. Warsaw was also white, if I may use that term. The other cities was well-off, middle-class, also white. In 2025, one is almost a ruin. It used to be a prosperous, medium-sized town. Meanwhile, this big, great city we’re in right now has become one of the wealthiest cities in Europe,” he pointed out.

Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Krzysztof Bosak emphasized, however, that in addition to illegal immigration, mass legal immigration is also a problem.

The discussion about legal immigration—its scale, rules, and criteria—is no less important, if not more important, because the transformation of Western Europe was largely the result of large-scale legal immigration, and only as a result—or in parallel—did illegal immigration begin to arrive, he said.

The politician also noted that the European Union treats different countries unequally when it comes to assessing their migration policies. He pointed out that this area has already been partially “renationalized,” but he warned against a possible hardening of the stance toward countries that continue to firmly protect their borders.

“Please note that very few of our Border Guard’s decisions—whether during the Law and Justice government or now under the Civic Platform-led government—have been seriously challenged by any EU bodies. However, I’m not saying that this won’t happen any moment now. It can happen. It depends solely on where the “Eye of Sauron” from Brussels, from Luxembourg, turns its gaze, and which regulations, which practices it chooses to scrutinize. Such arbitrariness, it seems to me, has been taking place in the European Union for years with regard to the practice of so-called pushbacks—that is, what I call sending illegal migrants back to the proper side of the border,” observed Krzysztof Bosak.

After the debate, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski said a few word of conclusion:

“Politico-legal and politico-constitutional blindness spares no one; that’s why it’s good that we have guides like Ordo Iuris, who show us what we should see, what to notice, what to anticipate, and what to prevent,”he noted.

See also:

• The Migration Pact and the Protection of the EU’s External Borders in 26 Questions and Answers
• The Great Reset – Our Draft Proposal for Deep EU Reform Now Available in Five Languages