Direct award of an action grant for the EMN National Contact Point of POLAND 2021-2022

ended

Beneficiaries of this application are: the Office for Foreigners (OFF, lead beneficiary) and the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (MIA, affiliated entity). OFF and MIA will set up a consortium for realisation of the project. The Office for Foreigners has been appointed by the Polish government as the PL EMN NCP, in accordance with article 5 (1) of the Decision n° 2008/381/EC (for the present call, the Office for Foreigners attaches a copy decision to appoint the Office for Foreigners as the EMN National Contact Point of PL issued by the Council of Ministers on August 9, 2021). However, the date of the factual transfer of responsibilities for the PL EMN NCP to the Office for Foreigners is October 9, 2021 which is a date of entering into force the Regulation no. 9 of the Head of the Office for Foreigners on establishing organisational regulation of the Office for Foreigners (attached). From this moment the responsibility for coordinating PL EMN NCP became an official task of the Office. The Office for Foreigners (OFF) was established in 2001 to ensure the comprehensive and professional handling of proceedings concerning granting foreign nationals, residing within the Republic of Poland, international protection, as well as the regularisation of their residency. The Head of the OFF is a central body of government administration competent in the matters of the entry by foreigners into, transit through, stay in, and departure from the territory of the Republic of Poland; granting international protection; granting asylum to foreigners; granting residence permits for humanitarian reasons or permits for tolerated stay; granting temporary protection, except for the issues reserved for other bodies; providing social assistance and medical care services to foreigners applying for international protection and maintaining the central IT systems, i.e. database of registers, records and lists related to foreign nationals (POBYT). Head of the Office is supervised by the minister competent for internal affairs. It should be noted that during the transition period - since August 9, 2021 till October 9, 2021 – both entities (OFF and MIA) were performing tasks of the PL NCP. The transition took place in the midst of the programming period. Over the last 12 years the PL EMN NCP has developed an expertise on migration, return and asylum law, creating tools at the national and European level (i.e. the PL EMN NCP created on national level inter-ministerial return expert group and participates in the EMN REG development i.a. by suggesting PL personnel for co-chairing the EMN REG). The expertise of the PL EMN NCP is the field of migration and asylum has become relevant for national stakeholders which sometimes require information from the national contact point by the Border Guard, Ministry of National Education and Science, Ministry of Family and Social Policy, Analytical Unit at the Polish Parliament for policy reasons and for answering international reports (i.e. EUROMED, ILO, etc.). This information exchange has been enhanced by the use of the ad-hoc query system. Also, the expertise has permitted the participation of staff members in the task force of trafficking of human beings established at the Ministry of the Interior and Administration. The PL EMN NCP has developed through the years a vast network with government institutions, national NGOs professional chambers, labour unions, parliament, international and European stakeholders as well as the academia. On the EMN national website [emn.gov.pl] a database of the National Migration Network is available. The current PL EMN NCP will build upon the experience gained by the previous NCP, take over all existing networks and develop new ones. The National Contact Point is currently composed of the: Office for Foreigners - acting as a coordinator and other entities relevant in the migration area supporting the coordinator: • Ministry of the Interior and Administration