Citizen sues Poland’s president for violating rule of law

May 11, 2024 | Law, Politics

A civil trial against Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, in which a citizen accuses him of violating the rule of law, has begun in a Warsaw court.

Gerard Weychert, a resident of Silesia in southern Poland, is demanding that the president make a public apology “for unlawful interference with his right, as a citizen of the Republic of Poland, to live in a democratic state governed by the rule of law”.

Weychert also wants the court to prohibit Duda from “carrying out any further behaviour that violates the principles of a democratic state under the rule of law, with a concomitant obligation to take measures to protect the constitutional order in the republic”.

Weychert wants to call all living former presidents of the Constitutional Tribunal as witnesses in the trial, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Weychert filed the lawsuit in 2020, pointing out that the president has a duty to uphold the rule of law and the constitution, as well as to exercise the utmost diligence in taking or preventing actions that could lead to a violation of the rules of a democratic state.

However, Weychert claimed that in fact, “through the actions and omissions of President Andrzej Duda, the principles of the rule of law as derived from the constitution were violated, which in turn violated the plaintiff’s right to live in a state…in which the authorities respect the rule of law”.

As examples, Weychert pointed to the changes that the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government, with which Duda was allied, introduced to the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS).

A wide range of expert bodies and international organisations – as well as the majority of the Polish public – regard PiS’s judicial reforms as a violation of the rule of law and an attempt to bring the judiciary under greater political control.

Weychert argues that the actions of the president in supporting those reforms had resulted in the violation of his personal rights.

“The conduct of the president…has repeatedly affected the constitutional order in the country, which has effectively prevented the plaintiff from exercising his civil rights,” reads the lawsuit, quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.

“The conduct undertaken in the legislative process, expressed in the signing of laws that introduced unconstitutional regulations…led to a situation in which the plaintiff was not guaranteed his fundamental rights, including the right to respect and conduct of state bodies according to the principle of legalism.”

Weychert’s case was originally dismissed by a court, which found that the president was excluded from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. But an appeals court disagreed and ordered the case to move forward.

In 2021, the case went to the district court in Warsaw, but it did not have time to begin hearings until this week due to an excessive caseload.

Pointing to those delays, Weychert told Gazeta Wyborcza that they show how the “eight-year-long reform of the justice system by Zbigniew Ziobro [justice minister in the PiS government] has failed”. Official data shows that courts now function more slowly than before PiS began its reforms.

A court spokeswoman told Notes from Poland that Friday’s first hearing was held in closed court but that a date of 23 May had been set to announce the verdict.

The president’s chancellery has not commented on the case. However, Duda and PiS have repeatedly defended their reforms and denied that they violated the rule of law.

Duda has in turn accused the new government, which replaced PiS in office in December, of violating the law in its efforts to undo some of PiS’s policies.


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Main image credit: Jakub Szymczyk/KPRP

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