The Common European Asylum System in Poland - Tema asyl ...

contribute, by clarifying somewhat the prospects for legal security and legitimacy,
to a lawful development on the EU asylum policy area.
The EU has recently been substantially enlarged, and this time the newcomers
are newly established democracies that has up until just recently been under
communist rule. The Common European Asylum System and all the obligations
that come with it will are of course valid also for these countries. I want to focus
on one of the newly entered EU member states, and have chosen Poland since it is
the most influential country among the recently entered member states, and it also
receives the most asylum applications (UNHCR 2005:10f).
The more state-centrist first phase of the CEAS has, as mentioned above, since
the 1st of May 2004 shifted into the more union-centred second phase. Narrowing
my perspective unto the specific Polish context I will attempt to evaluate the
national prospects for the implementation of the second phase of the reform,
considering the socioeconomic situation of Poland and the earlier implementation
performances, both on the EU acquis and on the first phase of the CEAS.
With the results of that analysis as a starting point I will also discuss the
legitimacy of the reform. The EU cooperation on the asylum policy area
circumscribes already at present the freedom of choice of country of asylum for
asylum seekers entering into the European Union, and an implemented CEAS will
do it even more. Of course the thought of the European legislators and decisionmakers
is that the imposed limitations shall be just and legitimate, once the system
functions as intended. As a complementary analysis I will therefore attempt to sort
out if there are any main obstacles for the legitimacy of the reform in the Polish
context.
The EU cooperation on the asylum area has received major criticism. Many
people amongst NGO’s, politicians and the public view the development towards
the Common European Asylum System as cynical, that such a complicated reform
will without a doubt imply a discrepancy between ambition and reality where
human rights risk to be lost. However in this study I do not intend to evaluate the
normative to be or not to be of the asylum regime. My only valuation is an
establishment of the fact that we in Europe today find ourselves in a situation
where the EU and the inner market are realities with growing importance, of
which cooperation on the asylum area has become a necessary consequence. With
the Common European Asylum System as a given future reality, my main focus is
to analyse how to improve the present situation towards diligence of human rights
and legal security.
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