Ustawa o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej przed Trybunałem Konstytucyjnym

Abstrakt

For the second time in the period of last ten years, Polish Parliament has attempted to penalize behaviors qualified as a public defamation of Polish Nation for participation, organization or responsibility for communist or Nazi crimes. The amendment of the Penal Code adopted in 2006, which was originally subject to the amendment of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, was considered by the Constitutional Tribunal to be unconstitutional because of the mode of its adoption (adoption or change of a code requires a special procedure, not preserved in this case). In 2018, the parliament passed an amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance which regulates a much broader scope of matter than the Act of 2006. The new provisions caused a great deal of tension in Poland’s relations with Israel, Ukraine and the USA. Despite the obvious violations of the Constitution, the President of the Republic of Poland did not use the right to initiate preventive review of the constitutionality of the law and he signed it. Then, he immediately challenged its provisions before the Constitutional Tribunal, pointing out the scale and intensity of the unconstitutionality of the challenged provisions.