Polish nongovernmental organizations organized over the last year several conferences which brought together representatives of the government and independent experts to discuss the implications and possible alternatives to the adoption of the Schengen acquis without reservation. Four initiatives, three of which produced written reports, are discussed here: Center for International Relations’ “Polish Eastern Border As The Border of the European Union,” Institute of Public Affairs’ “Polish Road to Schengen”, Forum of Non-Governmental Initiatives’ trilateral table on Justice and Home Affairs, and Batory Foundation’s and Institute for Public Affairs’ policy paper, “The Half-Open Door: the Eastern Border of the Enlarged European Union.”
The question now is what next can be done to make use of these initiatives to turn the collections of articles into useful advice instruments from the independent experts to the government which is in need of such advice. I suggest here that by identifying the formal problems with the current reports, both the editors and writers may become more effective before they go about to publicize their advice.
The recommendation is to coordinate the experts’ community better, creating a working group for the coordination of the proposals with the existing institutions and demand from the government as well as to help monitor the implementation of the governmental commitment.
The collections of the opinions of experts lack the guiding idea or interest. Some focus for the discussion, or a common professional language is needed. The field is still broken up into corners. But this is unfortunate, since institutions or methodologies need not divide—in fact, cases of crossing the institutions or standpoints (Iglicka, Rzeplinska, Boratynski) all worked to the advantage of actual policy capacity. But the present-day publications rarely mention these. Therefore, editors may benefit from imposing focus on the discussion.
In particular the editors need to watch out for the demand of their client, the national government. At the moment it looks that the non-governmental experts have a problem acknowledging governmental proposals. For instance, the “Half-open door” neglected to mention the fact that the opening of further consulates in the East was already written into the Integrated Border Management Strategy. It is true that this is the first report of the kind, and a clear separation from the government may be needed. However, it is questionable whether an attempt to bypass the government as a client for very specific advice in advantage of the European Commission can succeed. The attached case study of the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation demonstrates the value of trust which an NGO developed with the Ministry of Interior experts for the impact the independent expert had on the representatives of the Commission. Thus, the path seems to be the winning of trust of the government first, and then providing independent advice to the Commission, and not the vice versa.
The network is composed of independent experts, who stick to their fields of expertise. But there is a growing need for multidisciplinary approaches. The problem is that they need to be informed with frames of analysis, which is current and applicable (one cannot rely on the EU or international organizations or even the government for forecasts—they all have problems of interest—or capital invested in institutions). Two categories of experts can make their advice more effective: legal experts by including in their analyses of broader social and economic factors, and sociologists, economists and demographers by relating their advice to the capacity of current state institutions.
These network-building measures will enable the experts to prepare a joint list of common concerns on the level of expert units within the Ministry of Interior and a mixed-legal-academic NGO team. Some examples can be given here already. For instance:
* The government could work out with the lawyers the preliminary
guidelines for the scope of Schengen acquis. From there, talks could
be held on the desired directions of the national migration policy—delimiting
it already now from one covered by the Schengen acquis.
* Generalists—Okolski, Lodzinski—could update guidelines for
the migration doctrine, taking into account the institutions and laws in
place. These guidelines should be circulated among the experts on
labor market and foreign policy toward Eastern neighbors.
These formal moves should further enable experts to meet some of the needs of the government on the eve of Schengen accession.
In the short-run (until the accession): offer a critique of the integrated border management strategy in terms of possible shifts of funding, with a specific view to the buildup of consular offices. Organize a working group which will create scenarios for the impact of visa applications on the capacity of the consulates to process them. The scenarios should be based on present-day estimates. The working group will help the Ministry of Interior set up a rapid deployment fund to reallocate the staff and equipment.
In the medium-run (until the removal of the border controls on the Western border): monitor the border and prepare an independent report. Monitor the workload of consular offices—report on the conditions.