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Upon receipt of a refugee application, the Head of the Office for Foreigners verifies whether the Republic of Poland is a country responsible for processing the application. A country's responsibility is determined based on the provisions of the Council Regulation (EC) No. 343/2003 (the so-called Dublin II regulation). If no such responsibility is incumbent on Poland, the Head of the Office will issue a decision on the transfer of the person to a country responsible for processing their refugee application and will issue a decision on discontinuation of the procedure in Poland.

The applicant and the person on behalf of which the applicant is acting who is subject to the transfer may be expulsed by deportation to the border or the border of the state to which the transfer is being made or an airport or seaport in this state. For more information on Dublin procedures, click the following link:

Dublin procedures

If the responsibility for processing the application resides with Poland, the completeness of the data contained in the refugee application is verified in the first instance. If the application does not contain the applicant's first name and last name or the details of their country of origin and these shortcomings were impossible to remedy as part of the activities undertaken by the authority receiving the application, this application will be left without further action being taken.

The next element examined is the application's acceptability. If the application is deemed unacceptable, the refugee procedure will be discontinued. An application is not acceptable when:

• the applicant has already been granted refugee status in another Member State,
• after receiving a final refusal regarding the granting of the refugee status, the applicant submitted another application based on the same grounds,
• a spouse, who previously allowed the applicant to submit the application on their behalf, submitted a separate application and there are no circumstances affecting the spouse which would justify such an application.

The procedure will be accelerated (a decision will be issued within 30 days of the submission of the application) if the applicant:

• provided reasons for submitting the application other than a fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, political convictions or social background or a risk of serious harm or they failed to provide information on the circumstances surrounding their fear of persecution or risk of serious harm,
• comes from a safe country of origin mentioned on the common list adopted by the Council of the European Union provided that the applicant is a citizen of this country or is a stateless person and previously resided in this country permanently and gave no serious grounds not to recognise this state as a safe country of origin in their special situation and due to the fact that they met the requirements for being granted refugee status,
• they misled the authority processing the application by keeping some information or documents secret or presenting false information or documents of relevance to granting refugee status,

• submitted another application in which they provided other personal details,
• presented incoherent, conflicting, unlikely or insufficient explanations to confirm the fact of being persecuted,
• they submitted an application to delay an expulsion decision or to delay the enforcement of such a decision or interfere with it,
• represents a threat to the security of the state or public order or had previously been expulsed from the territory of the Republic of Poland.