re:constitution
2023/ 2024

Grażyna Baranowska

Is Poland’s Rule of Law Crisis Affecting Its Border Practices at the Polish–Belarus Border?

Grażyna Baranowska is affiliated with two academic institutions: the Hertie School in Berlin and the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. At the Hertie School, she leads a project funded by the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which seeks to identify and interpret international legal obligations regarding ‘missing migrants’. As an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences she also collaborates in the project MEMOCRACY, which scrutinizes the intersection of memory laws and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. In the past, she was among others a Post-Doctoral researcher at EU-funded project on Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective, worked as policy advisor at the German Institute for Human Rights, and was involved in the process of drafting the General Comment on enforced disappearances and migration for the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances. In 2022, she was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as an independent expert of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances.

Is Poland’s Rule of Law Crisis Affecting Its Border Practices at the Polish–Belarus Border?

Since 2021, deliberate actions by Belarusian state authorities have led to a vast increase of people irregularly crossing the border from Belarus into the EU. The three directly involved EU states – Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania – respond with actions that aggravated the humanitarian crisis. The responses mirrored practices at other EU borders, including pushbacks, building walls, and attempts to criminalize humanitarian aid. At the same time, the Belarus–EU border crisis shows distinct elements. In particular, one of the EU countries involved in the responses, Poland, faces a major rule of law crisis.

The aim of the project is to assess the role of Poland’s rule of law backsliding in the humanitarian crisis at the Belarus–EU border. The project will hypothesize that the rule of law backsliding has influenced Polish authorities’ response to the humanitarian crisis, even if at first glance, it may appear that the outcome is similar to those at other EU borders. To assess that, the project will compare Poland’s responses with actions by other states at the EU border, evaluating how unique the situation on the EU–Belarus border is compared to other EU borders.