On 15 October 2018, attorney Izabela Banach, representative of the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, submitted another application to the Office for Foreigners in Kozlovska’s case. This was done in response to a decision of the Office which, two weeks earlier, refused to remove the President of the ODF from the SIS and thus upheld the decision not to admit her to the European Union.
Attorney Izabela Banach appealed against the decision of the Office (being a response to our request of 31 August 2018), accusing it of violating several articles of the Act on foreigners (e.g. “erroneous assessment of the evidence with regard to the fulfilment (…) of the conditions for inclusion on the list of foreigners whose stay on the territory of the Republic of Poland is undesirable”), the Code of Administrative Procedure (e.g. “inadequate reasoning of the order due to the use of (…) overly general statements and conclusions”) or even the SIS Regulation “by its misuse”.
To recap: on 13 August 2018, the President of the Open Dialogue Foundation was detained at a Belgian airport and deported from the EU as a result of her name having been entered into the Schengen Information System by the Polish authorities. Her stay on the territory of individual states in the Schengen area is possible thanks to short-term national visas issued by, among others, Belgium and Germany, so that Lyudmyla Kozlovska can participate in conferences and hearings about the state of the rule of law in Poland and the persecution of opposition activists in Poland.
Also, on 15 October 2018, a decision of the Mazovian Voivode was received informing about the refusal to grant Kozlovska a long-term EU resident permit on the Polish territory.
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Read also:
- Poland uses SIS to prevent President of the Open Dialogue Foundation from entering the Schengen area
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- Information on unprecedented attacks on civil society organisations in Poland