“The presidential draft bill is good law without populism, without fiction, without shifting responsibility onto people and placing demands on them that few can meet, while at the same time ensuring the proper treatment of animals,” assessed the head of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, Zbigniew Bogucki, referring to the draft meant to replace the so-called “chain law” vetoed by the president. He added that the draft was submitted to the Sejm on Tuesday.
President Karol Nawrocki announced on Tuesday that he had decided to veto the so-called chain law, which was intended to introduce a ban on keeping dogs tethered. He declared that he would submit his own bill on the matter to the Sejm. On Tuesday evening, the head of his chancellery announced on X that the draft had already been submitted.
In his post, Bogucki stated that “kennels the size of a small city apartment are an absurdity.”
“The vetoed law required constructing, primarily for dogs not kept indoors, kennels of up to 20 square meters, and in the case of three large dogs, it would have had to be 30 square meters, or alternatively three kennels of 20 square meters each, so a total of 60 square meters. These kennels were to have a height of no less than 1.7 meters (even for a small dog) and meet several additional, strictly defined requirements,”
Bogucki wrote.
Explaining the reasons for the veto, he noted that the regulation “ultimately assumed weighing the dogs to determine the proper size of the kennel.” He added that these requirements applied “primarily to the Polish countryside, because in cities, as a rule, dogs live in apartments.”
“At the same time, it is worth noting that the fate of a huge Great Dane kept in a tiny apartment, or a husky let out onto a two-meter balcony for the several-hour daily absences of its owners, did not trouble the authors of the law, even though the lives of those animals are far worse than those of many dogs in the countryside,”
He emphasized that the law meant very substantial financial burdens, and in his view, many owners would not be able to bear such costs. “And that created real risks: the risk of people abandoning dogs because they would be unable to meet such requirements; it would harm dog adoption – people would stop adopting dogs from shelters, knowing they could not meet expensive and unrealistic standards; it would provide grounds to confiscate a large dog because its kennel was, for example, 15 square meters instead of the required 20, and to place it in a shelter where it would have only a few square meters,” he enumerated.
“This is not a veto against animals. This is a veto against bad, harmful, impractical law – harmful to both people and animals,”
he wrote.
The head of the Presidential Chancellery stated that the presidential draft provides for a ban on keeping dogs tethered, which, as he noted, effectively removes chains from dogs. He added that the draft introduces, for dogs kept in kennels, unheated rooms, or open spaces, an obligation to provide the animal with appropriate shelter from weather conditions, sized proportionately to the dog.
The proposed regulation would also introduce an obligation for the owner of a dog previously kept on a tether to apply safety measures preventing the animal from escaping uncontrollably beyond its permanent living area.
“President Karol Nawrocki’s draft is good law without populism, without fiction, without shifting responsibility onto people and imposing requirements that few can meet, while at the same time ensuring the good treatment of animals. We invite all those interested in real solutions benefiting both people and animals to cooperate, without dividing the countryside and the cities,”
Bogucki wrote.