President Nawrocki was reportedly to have received several pardon requests. However, media reports indicate that so far – he has rejected all of them.
The right of clemency is part of the constitutional powers of the president. He may pardon a convicted person if, after thoroughly analyzing the case and receiving the relevant request, he considers that there are sufficient grounds to do so.
“The Chancellery of the President of Poland Karol Nawrocki does not publish information about the application or refusal of the right of clemency by the head of state, as previous presidents did. The Chancellery of the President of Poland replied that ‘since August 6, 2025, the Prosecutor General has submitted 12 requests for pardons to the President of Poland. So far, the President of the Republic of Poland, Mr. Karol Nawrocki, has not made any decision regarding the exercise of the right of clemency,'” reads the article in Rzeczpospolita.
The Prosecutor’s Office provided the newspaper with information about the requests submitted to the president. According to the data, during the period “from August 6 to September 30, the Prosecutor General submitted 14 requests in the indicated procedure – all contained negative positions regarding pardoning the convicted persons concerned,” said PG spokesperson Prosecutor Anna Adamiak. She added that none of the cases involved public figures.
Who was hoping for a pardon?
It turns out that five of the fourteen submitted requests concerned drivers.
“This includes two convicted for causing accidents resulting in death under Article 177 § 2 of the Penal Code (i.e., unintentionally), requesting the shortening of lifetime bans on driving motor vehicles. Three other requests were from individuals convicted of driving under the influence, who also wanted to reduce lifetime bans (two of which were lifetime). A pardon request was also submitted by two people convicted of possession and participation in drug trafficking – one concerned conditional suspension of a prison sentence, and the other the expungement of a conviction,” reports the newspaper.
But that is not all. A mayor convicted of corruption, who received a suspended prison sentence and an eight-year ban from holding administrative office, also applied for a pardon from the head of state.
Another request concerned a man convicted of rape, abuse, and threatening a witness, sentenced to three years and four months in prison. “The convicted person was also ordered by the court to leave the premises and was subject to a three-year restraining order from approaching the victims. He served his sentence but wanted the president to lift the prohibitions”, the report clarifies.
President Nawrocki also denied pardons to two individuals convicted of fraud. As Rz reports – “one of them requested conditional suspension of a sentence of one year and ten months in prison, and the other (after serving two years of restricted liberty) requested early expungement of the conviction. Two additional individuals were convicted of counterfeiting money and promissory notes, sentenced to two years and to one year and eight months of imprisonment. Their requests concerned conditional release or conditional suspension of the sentence. The final case involved a Polish citizen convicted by a court in Ireland in 2016 of life imprisonment for murder.”