19 September:

• 14:30-16:00: Polish Senate extraordinary Committee on Pegasus, meeting with Marcin Bosacki, Chairman of the Senate extraordinary Committee and committee members
• 16:30 – 18:00 Meeting with Members of the Sejm with the Civic Coalition Club and the Left Coalition Club

20 September:

• 8:30-10:00: Poland’s Supreme Audit Office, meeting with Janusz Pawelczyk and Marcin Marjański, advisors to President Marian Banaś
• 10:30-12:00: Meeting with General Piotr Pytel
• 13:30-15:00: Meeting with victims: Andrzej Malinowski, former president of the Employers of Poland organization; Krzysztof Brejza, chief of staff in the election campaign in 2019; Michał Kołodziejczak, political activist; Ewa Wrzosek, Prosecutor.
• 15:15-16:45: Ombudsman, meeting with Valeri Vachev, Deputy Commissioner for Human Rights and Mirosław Wróblewski, Director of Constitutional, International and European Law Department
• 17:00-18:30: Meeting with Judges Piotr Gąciarek, Dariusz Mazur, Krystian Markiewicz, Katarzyna Kwiatkowska on the judicial oversight of the use of Pegasus and similar spyware by state authorities.

21 September:

• 08:00- 9:30: Meeting with experts on security services: Piotr Niemczyk, former director in Office of State Protection; Jacek Mąka, former colonel and former deputy Chief of Counterintelligence Service; Józef Polikowski, Stratpoints foundation.
• 9:45- 11:15: Meeting with authors of the study „How to saddle Pegasus“: Jacek Cichocki, former Special Services Coordinator; Adam Rapacki, retired Police General; Wojciech Klicki, the Panoptykon Foundation.
• 11:30-13:00: Meeting with civil society/human rights defenders/journalists: Ewa Siedlecka, journalist at Polityka; Marcin Wolny, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights; Sylwia Czubkowska, Spidersweb.

The MPs also wanted to meet with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice, but this was refused.

The mission was attended by MEPs Jeroen Lenaers, Sophia In’t Veld, Vladimír Bilčík, Bartosz Arłukowicz, Juan Ignacio Zoido, Katarina barley, Łukasz Kohut, Róża Thun and Hohenstein and Marcel Kolaja.

At the press conference on 21 September, the Chair of the Committee stressed that the visit had brought new perspectives on the misuse of spyware in Poland. Poland’s government uses „national security“ and thus the secret services to justify operations. This undermines the system of legal and institutional checks and balances. People who are considered political opponents can be targeted in this way. Crucial democratic standards and civil rights enshrined in the laws of the EU and Poland would be grossly violated. This adds another dimension to the crisis of the rule of law in Poland. This would also have an impact on the 2023 parliamentary elections, which cannot be free nor fair with the wiretapping of political opponents. The European Parliament is also corrupted when MEPs sitting there are wiretapped.

According to Sophia In’t Veld, Pegasus is an instrument of an authoritarian agenda against opposition members and others with political dissent. This is all the more serious because most democratic institutions have been hijacked or dismantled, so victims have neither protection nor redress. Europol should come into play and provide assistance to those affected. The EU must increase pressure on Israel and the NSO company based there. The Israeli authorities would have to confirm whether or not the export licences had been cancelled for the Polish authorities and the contracts with them. The EU must quickly adopt strict regulations on the use of spy programmes, he said.