Approving commentary to the verdict
of the Provincial Administrative Court
in Olsztyn dated 14 March 2013,
file no. II SA/Ol 196/13
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Wyższa Szkoła Gospodarki Euroregionalnej
im. Alcide De Gasperi w Józefowie
Publication date: 2016-06-30
JoMS 2016;29(2):405-416
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
It must be stated that the voted verdict of the Provincial Administrative Court
in Olsztyn is correct; according to the verdict, granting resolution-making initiative
to a group of persons who enjoy active electoral rights does not violate the law
because the civic resolution-making initiative is within the “limits of law” arising
from Art. 169 (4) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland as a general right to
shape the content of a statute. The very granting of resolution-making initiative to
a group of residents does not limit in any way the rights of councilors or the council
because submission of a draft resolution does not result in the requirement to adopt
it but only the requirement to examine it – as in the case of any other initiative. Consequently,
there is no deprivation or limitation of the competence of the decisionmaking
body – the commune council.
Moreover, I believe that questioning the provisions of a statute only on the basis
of the claim that they do not have a faithful and detailed origin in an act is an error
in the legal art because it is wrong to claim that a commune does not have a detailed
basis separately for each provision of its statute while overlooking the general
basis of all provisions of statutes contained in the relevant regulations: Art. 164 (4)
of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and Art. 3 (1), Art. 18 (2) (1), Art. 21
(1), and Art. 22 (1) of the Act on commune-level local government. A commune
statute can regulate all matters related to the system of government in the commune
that are not expressly regulated in the act, as long as it is not contradictory
to the provisions of the act.
What is more, I believe that not only a group of residents have the right to resolution-making
initiative granted in the statute, but also that such a right can be granted
to, e.g. a general meeting of an association or a resolution-making body of a political
party that has a local unit in the territory of a specific unit of local government.