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The catalogue of rights and freedoms was confirmed primarily in Chapter II of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997. It includes personal and political rights and freedoms, economic, social and cultural rights of Polish citizens, as well as the guarantees for foreigners staying in our country. The vast majority of rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution are subject to various limitations.

Chapter II of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland also guarantees means for the defence of freedoms and rights:

• right to compensation for any harmharmharm done by any action of an organ of public authority contrary to law,

• right to appeal against judgments and decisions made at first stage,

• right to appeal to the Constitutional Tribunal for its judgment on the conformity to the Constitution of a statute or another normative act upon which basis a court or organ of public administration has made a final decision on freedoms or rights specified in the Constitution,

• right to apply to the Commissioner for Citizens' Rights for assistance in protection of freedoms or rights infringedinfringedinfringed by organs of public authority,

• right to a fair and public hearing of one’s case, without undue delay, before a competent, impartial and independent court.

The constitutional provisions guarantee that an individual has the right to compensation if the institutions or organizational structures of the legislative, executive or judicial authorities (i.e. public authorities) act in violation of the law. This provision also includes omissionomissionomission, that is, failure to act. The opportunity to appeal against judgments and decisions issued in the first instance is one of the elements of a fair trial and in practice means the necessity to provide two‑instance proceedings.

An appeal to the Constitutional Tribunal is an instrument of protection of constitutional rights and freedoms of an individual:

• the complaint may be brought by anyone whose constitutional rights and freedoms have been infringed,

• the subject of the complaint must be a statute or other normative act, which was the basis for a decision for the court or administrative authority,

• the provisions of the act must violate rights, freedoms or obligations specified in the Constitution,

• the complaint must be made by a lawyer or legal advisor,

• before submitting the complaint, the applicant must use all judicial and administrative means of appeal or remedies available to him,

• the complaint must be submitted within three months from the date of delivery of a final judgment or other final decision to the complainant.

The Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland is the only official source of information on the universally applicable law in Poland. The publisher of the periodical is the Prime Minister. The first issue appeared on February 1, 1918. At present, the Journal of Laws is published only in the electronic version. Constitutional provisions are supplementedsupplementedsupplemented by statutes. In many places the Constitution refers to the need to adopt a law that will contain more detailed regulations. The statutes contain not only guarantees of rights and freedoms, but also related limitations.

Poland is a member of numerous international organizations of a global and regional nature. It has also ratified many international agreements on human rights. The most important of them were adopted within the framework of the United Nations, the International Labor Organization and the Council of Europe.

However, some of the important international human rights obligations have not been accepted by Poland:

• International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families of December 18, 1990,

• International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance of December 20, 2006,

• Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine of April 4, 1997 (signed by Poland on May 7, 1999, but not yet ratified).

Moreover, Poland has not signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Complaint Procedure of December 19, 2011 and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of December 13, 2006. This means that it is not possible to submit a notification of violation by the Polish state of the rights and freedoms guaranteed in these conventions to relevant committees of the Rights of the Child or the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It is also worth mentioning that Poland has not adopted the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Since 1989, Poland is a democratic state, guaranteeing human rights and freedoms. These rights are guarded by both the legislative and executive organs, administrative bodies, judicial authorities and tribunals, as well as specialized bodies such as the Commissioner for Citizens’ Rights, the Ombudsman for Children, the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection, the Supreme Chamber of Control. However, despite numerous institutions established to protect human rights in Poland, as in any democratic state, the rights are violated. The scale of violations is evidenced byevidenced byevidenced by the number of complaints submitted to the Commissioner for Citizens’ Rights or the Ombudsman for Children. The proof of the existence of many human rights violations in our country is not only the number of complaints against Poland to the European Court of Human Rights, but also the number of cases that Poland loses. By 2013, the Court issued 1042 rulings in cases brought against Poland, of which in 885 Poland violated at least one of the rights or freedoms guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights. These data show that there is still a long way to go for Poland to fully meet the standards of human rights protection.

Keywords

chapter II of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, means for the defence of freedoms and rights, Constitutional Tribunal, Commissioner for Citizens' Rights, Ombudsman for Children, Inspector General for Personal Data Protection, Supreme Chamber of Control

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