The debate, entitled “Corrupt Large-Scale Sale of Schengen Visas,” took place in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday, news outlets reported.
Opening the discussion, European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said: “The alleged cases of fraud and corruption in the Polish visa system are extremely worrying. If third-country nationals have been allowed the right of free movement within Schengen, without respecting the appropriate conditions and procedures, this would amount to a violation of EU law, in particular the visa code.”
He added: “The Commission is in close contact with the Polish authorities, and expects them to investigate these allegations seriously and address any wrongdoing, if and when established.”
Speaking on behalf of the parliament’s largest grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), Dutch lawmaker Jeroen Lenaers said that moving through the EU’s passport-free, borderless Schengen zone was one of the “key freedoms” for the bloc’s citizens.
Lenaers added that the Polish government had “failed spectacularly” to protect the Schengen zone’s outer borders by issuing visas to people who were not entitled to receive them, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The EPP includes Poland’s opposition centrist Civic Platform (PO) party and the rural-based Polish People’s Party (PSL).
Meanwhile, Patryk Jaki, a MEP with Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, described the debate as “the height of hypocrisy” and said that, according to the bloc’s statistics, Poland was one of the EU’s “safest countries."
Jaki noted that the Polish government had built a wall along the country's border with Belarus to prevent illegal migration.
He also stated that the Polish authorities were against the EU’s proposed migration pact, under which he said asylum seekers would be shared out among the EU’s member states.
Referring to the cash-for-visas controversy, Jaki said that “Poland’s security services uncovered and stopped illegal practices which concerned 268 visas.”
Róża Thun from the Poland 2050 grouping, who spoke on behalf of the EP’s liberal Renew group, said that Poland’s conservative government was breaking the law by “rejecting applications for legal protection from refugees on the Belarus border.”
She added that, as a result of pushbacks by Polish authorities, some of the refugees died at the border.
Thun argued that the Polish government was “at the same time admitting to our shared Schengen zone, without any checks, people who had bribed them,” the PAP news agency reported.
Cash-for-visas probe
On September 21, Poland sent a letter to the European Commission, saying that its investigation into possible irregularities in the granting of work visas to migrants concerned 268 visa applications, “a small fraction” of the total number of visas issued by the country.
The government added that during an 18-month investigation, Poland had granted more than 500,000 work visas, almost 80 percent of them for citizens of Ukraine and Belarus, according to reports.
Meanwhile, the number of so-called short-term Schengen work visas issued during that period totalled 767, according to officials.
The probe into irregularities in the visa process concerns 268 applications for work visas to Poland, Brussels was told.
The Polish government also said that prosecutors had so far brought charges against seven persons, none of them state officials.
The probe focuses on the “exercise of unauthorised influence on consular officials to fast-track selected visa applications,” the Polish government added.
Meanwhile, “Polish consuls acted at all times in line with national and EU law,” the letter also said.
The Polish government also stated that the visa applicants in question had been “thoroughly checked by state agencies for potential impact on Poland’s security, especially security in connection with terrorist threats,” and found “to pose no threat to Poland’s security,” the PAP news agency reported.
Moreover, Poland’s anti-corruption officers launched a probe within a day after receiving reports of possible irregularities in the visa process, in July 2022, the Polish foreign ministry told the EU’s executive Commission.
Political accountability has also been exercised, with the deputy foreign minister in charge of consular policy dismissed last month, the Polish foreign ministry wrote in its letter to Brussels, according to the PAP news agency.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, European Parliament