No chance of appealing the decision of the commission investigating Russian influences? Nonsense!

The echoes of the establishment of the State Commission for Examining Russian Influences on the Internal Security of the Republic of Poland in the years 2007-2022 continue to resound. Following the panicked reaction from the members of the total opposition, the European Commission has also started directing its threats towards Poland. To dispel any doubts, we are publishing the full text of the law that was finally established after the Senate’s rejection of the bill.

“We are particularly concerned about the Polish law regarding the special commission,” said Didier Reynders, the Commissioner for Justice, before the meeting of the EU General Affairs Council.

At one point, the commissioner even threatened that the European Commission “will not hesitate to take action in this matter if necessary.”

This kind of narrative is remarkably similar to the version propagated by the politicians of the total opposition, who yesterday warned that there is no possibility of appealing the commission’s decision.

Responding to these allegations, Łukasz Schreiber, the Minister in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, refuted the narrative put forward by the total opposition in this matter in just a few minutes. He reminded everyone that there is the possibility of appealing the commission’s decision to the court because the commission is supposed to operate according to the principles of the Administrative Procedure Code. He also mentioned specific articles of the Administrative Procedure Code that guarantee this.

This commission will be able to issue administrative decisions; this is stated in Article 36, it acts based on the Administrative Procedure Code, as stated in Article 40 of this law. I’m mentioning this because someone may want to verify it. Since it operates based on the Administrative Procedure Code and the jurisdiction of the courts is not excluded, an appeal to the court is available for the decision, precisely through judicial review. Therefore, anyone who may be affected by it has the right to appeal to the Administrative Court – he explained, adding: The Administrative Court will automatically have the power to suspend the decision until the case is considered. So, the possibility and risk that everyone on the opposition side is afraid of is highly unlikely – said Minister Schreiber.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paweł Jabłoński, warned on Twitter that another distortion regarding the commission for investigating Russian influences is circulating in the media space, namely that while everyone is entitled to lodge a complaint with the court (initially, they claimed that such a possibility did not exist), “court review is an illusion.”

“According to these theories, the court could only assess whether the commission made its decision in accordance with the law, i.e., whether the procedures were followed – it could not examine whether someone actually acted under Russian influence (that is, whether the commission made correct factual findings and applied the appropriate provisions to those findings). That is not true: in our system, administrative courts examine BOTH violations of procedural rules (including those related to the correctness of evaluating the evidence – which is crucial for factual findings) and violations of substantive law (that is, whether established facts fall within the scope of provisions defining what constitutes an action under Russian influence). This is clearly regulated by Article 145 of the Law on Proceedings before Administrative Courts,” wrote Deputy Minister Jabłoński.”

Below is the download link for the full text of the LAW in Polish, dated April 14, 2023, on the State Commission for Investigating Russian Influences on the Internal Security of the Republic of Poland in the years 2007-2022. The text of the law was finalized after the Senate rejected the bill.