Mr. Piotr Rakowski:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for inviting me to address this problem from the perspective of our Government. I will refrain from going into the detail of my written intervention, especially as the Chairman has noted we are lacking time; therefore, I will be brief. I am sorry if therefore I miss a few points. I subscribe to the majority, if not all, of the points raised by my colleagues, the German and Italian ambassadors. I also refer to the earlier intervention of Ms Barbara Nolan.

Our intervention which we issued last week has slightly changed in respect of the decisions already recorded at the Justice and Home Affairs Council yesterday, but I will try to describe the overall thinking which was behind our position initially and which I think will also be reflected in one way or another by our Prime Minister tonight.

The area of freedom of security and justice policy which cannot be handled by the instruments in this policy alone will form part of the context of a discussion on the migration crisis. This is not only the internal problem of the European Union. It is also put under pressure by the external aspects which then connect with both Common Foreign and Security Policy and external aspects of possibly a number of sectoral policies. That is why the thinking of the Polish Government was, as mentioned, to look at the context not only from the humanitarian point of view which requires an ad hocaction at the current moment but also from the perspective of it being a rather far and wider-reaching problem, which means looking at the root causes and the situations in countries which are the reasons for the migration of the refugees. It also involves working together with the international community.

This is a much deeper and more complicated situation, as was said. The issue of relocation and resettlement was also mentioned. I think we can talk about "the five Rs", as I would add the issues of readmission, return and reintegration. There is also the question of how to handle the issue of illegal and legal migration in the refugee crisis and of those who are readmitted and have to be able to live again in the country. The way they escape or the other countries could provide a place for them to stay must be considered.

In the debate on the crisis a matter which was also raised by the representatives of Poland was sovereignty. We were against an automatic system of quotas because, from the position of the internal and external perspectives, we were not sure they could provide the right message. There is already pressure and it might send a wrong signal that all this would be done automatically. We must look at the capacity of countries, not only at this moment but also in a potential future moment. In this respect, I subscribe to what the Italian ambassador has said about being a front country. Ours is a front country of the land border, obviously, and fortunately not under the same pressure as Italy. We cannot and do not forget the problem behind our eastern border which is also the EU external border in Ukraine. I agree that winter is coming and that we cannot predict what the situation will be if we have the humanitarian and refugee crisis of people coming from Ukraine. There are different scenarios. Some scenarios are not taking place. Those dealing with the current crisis should reflect also on the potential problems that may occur.

We do support and have agreed that there needs to be co-operation with third countries and countries with which the European Union has recognition agreements. In order to help, especially those neighbouring countries with a problem of refugees, there is room for further work to be done by the European Union. I was pleased to hear that information had been provided by the Commission on how EU institutions were also engaging in this respect.

As a country with an EU external border, we fully understand and subscribe to the mechanism and possibilities of the Schengen agreement for arranging temporary border controls. While we must try to manage different problems as they appear, in the longer term it would be a failure of the system we have created to secure the freedom of movement of persons that makes the border friendly as an external border for people to travel to. In this respect, we cannot go in the direction of just totally blocking on a permanent basis.

We undertook a number of reforms and efforts when we were in the process of accession. For instance, we limited the distance between our border control stations or border points from, if I recall properly, sixty-something km to 19 km. We have modernised the border control system, with non-military, police-oriented forces which can also work effectively on a mobile and permanent basis in handling the issue and the pressure. These are like the experiences of other countries, on which we can rely and use as a tool.

I fully agree on the points made about fighting illegal migration. The European Union and the member states have different agencies at their disposal. There was mention of a number of operations by Frontex and Europol in handling this, unfortunately, profitable business and the moneys spent in both trafficking and illegal migration. Efforts should also continue in this respect.

The final matter which countries are discussing and which is also, in a way, important is information policy - those countries which in a way are safe and those which are not and those with which we can co-operate.

The external context of the pressure of the refugee and migration crisis for the EU is also complex. We cannot compare the Balkans, Syria and Libya with one another, as they are completely different situations. The refugees are often mixed in with the economic migrants. Within the economic migrant group, we can differentiate between different people who are travelling to change their lives economically and those whose daily or annual incomes are too low to survive. In this respect what the UN and the member states may do and the kind of message we are sending to the international community concerning how we can engage different actors is also important. I will conclude there. I thank the Chairman and other committee members.