• Tribunal’s Verdict comes into life
  • 16.05.2007
First copies of the Journal of Laws, concerning the Constitutional Tribunal’s lustration law verdict, has been published. Those who did not send their vetting declarations to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) yet, do not now need to do so.

According to the vetting law, failing to submit the declaration on time one could have faced penalties, including losing one’s job.

Tuesday – in accordance with the partially questioned act – was the expiry date of submitting vetting declarations.

As IPN’s spokesman Andrzej Arseniuk informed, so far some 50,000 declarations came to the Institute. According to various estimates there should be 300,000 up to even 700,000 of them.

Government spokesman Jan Dziedziczak stressed that it was the fastest publication of a verdict by the Constitutional Tribunal within the last two years, as over this period the Tribunal’s verdicts had to wait for publication some 9 days on average.

Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, who directed the verdict to go to press, said earlier that it will be published immediately, but in proper order.

“I am not concealing that I have neither any political nor legal obligation to be in a hurry right now. The case took its normal course,” PM Kaczyński said.

“Publication of Constitutional Tribunal verdict is of a preferential character in relation to announcing other acts of law,” the press office of the Tribunal appealed in turn.

On Friday Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal recognised some of the regulations of the vetting law; among others publishing agents catalogues by the IPN as well as vetting of journalists and workers of non-public schools as violating the constitution.
The Tribunal re-established the previous definition of collaboration and ordered the return of vetting declarations to people whose vetting was recognised as against the constitution, such as journalists rectors of universities.

It also questioned the vetting declaration form itself and the sanction of losing a mandate by a person elected in general elections for failing to submit a declaration. (jm)