More than 70,000 people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco in late July, according to the draft resolution's backdrop. Most were subsequently turned back, though the situation along that stretch of the EU's external border has yet to stabilize.
Parliament will debate the measure Tuesday and hold a final vote Thursday. Andrzej Halicki, who leads Poland's delegation within the chamber's center-right grouping, said the push for the resolution came from Polish members of the European Parliament affiliated with the centrist Civic Coalition and the agrarian Polish People's Party.
"I think the Polish paragraph will be an important element of this written document, because it is widely said that Poland can be an example for others", Halicki said.
Some lawmakers also expect European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to touch on Poland's migration record when she delivers her State of the European Union address Wednesday, a day before the resolution comes to a vote.
The reference to Poland traces back to the country's handling of a separate, earlier crisis: a surge of migrants pushed toward its border with Belarus by the government in Minsk. Warsaw's response drew criticism from EU partners at first, but that changed at an October 2024 EU summit, when Prime Minister Donald Tusk secured backing from the European Commission and fellow leaders for a temporary suspension of asylum applications along that border — restricting asylum rights for people who crossed it illegally and by force.
Halicki said that record is now shaping how other EU governments view Poland's approach.
"I think it is important for all Europeans to hear what our Western partners are saying about how Poland dealt with this migration threat — not only the hybrid pressure on the Polish-Belarusian border, but the broader security problem posed by the migration threat", he said, adding that migrants who enter EU territory illegally are not entitled to asylum and must leave.
The Ceuta resolution goes further, according to Halicki, by proposing that the asylum suspension model Poland and Finland adopted at their own borders become available EU-wide, including for Spain in response to Ceuta.
"The suspension of the right to asylum was the subject of some controversy, and even threats of potential penalties. Poland and Finland adopted this kind of solution. Today it seems this should be a Europe-wide law that can be adopted in crisis situations at the request of a given country — in this case we can talk about Ceuta, that Spain also has, or could have, this kind of option and should use it", Halicki said, describing the proposal as a Polish contribution meant to strengthen the EU's broader migration pact.
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Source: Polish Radio