When the most prominent Polish poet, Jacek Podsiad, asked me a fewer months ago what I think of anarchy, I responded gibberishly and incoherently, like a associate of the old street survey, asked about Colonel Kukliński's arrival in Poland. However, erstwhile a minute later the poet informed me that he intended to renounce Polish citizenship, while presenting a clear legal argument, I had no uncertainty that political criticism should support him in this process.
Eventually, the Submission filed a motion with the President's office on Monday 24 February, on the 3rd anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is an accidental date – like the fact that it coincided with the vote 3 days earlier by the Polish Sejm Law limiting the right to asylum - but significant.
There have been many specified crucial moments in fresh months, not to mention the full decade since the publication in Gazeta Wyborcza interviewLast chance for the Polish StateIn which Podsiadno told Dorota Wodecka about convicting him for a fictional debt in a trial he did not know about for many years.
Only the last weeks brought, among others, the announcements of Prime Minister Tusk about Poland's termination Convention prohibiting the usage of anti-personnel mines. By means of general military training, the army is to be placed under all roof. For me, that's adequate to consider whether I want to fertilize political and military decisions imposed upon me by belonging to the structures of the state.
The subliminary emphasizes that the constitution does not substance much to him, but whether he interprets it as profoundly as Canon of school reading? Does the Constitution supply for the anticipation of "exit from you" and can, in the light of its provisions, the president accept only this decision? I asked my lawyers what the basic law on the waiver of citizenship truly meant.
Jacek Possessed under the post office of the Chancellery of the president of Poland. photograph by Jakub Szafranski“Nothing about me is in the Constitution”
In his application, the poet cites 2 par. Article 34 of the Polish Constitution, which reads: "The Polish citizen must not lose his Polish citizenship unless he renounces him himself", and Article 137, which states: "The president of the Republic of Poland grants Polish citizenship and agrees to renounce Polish citizenship".
The explanation that he presents has been taken in his commentary – about the contradiction between writing in Constitution Prof. Ryszard Piotrowski from the University of Warsaw supports, among another things, the fact that it is not possible to express his consent. Quoted in an article by Peter Szymaniak Attached to the passport from the "Journal of Law Newspapers" of February 14, 2023, the constitutionalist stated that the possible dependence on the resignation of citizenship on the President's consent in Article 137 is irrelevant in the light of earlier Article 34.
In his analysis for the “DGP”, Prof. Piotrowski besides points out that the opinion on “agreement” is misleading, due to the fact that in the light of the constitution it is more appropriate to talk about presumption of consent. The constitutionalist in the said article adds that "the refusal to quit citizenship should only apply to cases in which the citizen's will is apparent – erstwhile faced with a situation where the request to renounce citizenship is simply a consequence of coercion or pressure".
It is in this respect that there is clearly a contradiction underlying the provision and the unconstitutionality of the Constitution. In addition, as the Subsidiary emphasizes, the basic law "refers to freedom, even though it states that man is born as enslaved due to the fact that he is forced to belong to the state."
Law and Promes
Not all experts asked by Szymaniak agreed with Prof. Piotrowski. According to Dr. Jacek Zalesny of the University of Warsaw, the overarching nonsubjective of global law is to prevent the creation of categories of stateless persons.
This intent was besides intended by the Act of 2 April 2009 on Polish citizenship, which, in earlier cases, prefers to renounce citizenship – including in the case of Robert Luzar – was cited by the President's Office. Article 47 of the Act states that the president may "give consent" and Article 48, par. 4, obliges the individual who resigns to submit a "document confirming the nationality of another State or the commitment to give it".
Jacek Possessed in the Post Office of the Chancellery of the president of Poland. photograph by Jakub SzafranskiOnly that Poland has inactive not ratified the key legal acts governing statelessness – both the 1954 and 1961 UN Conventions and the 1997 European Convention on Citizenship. And if historical circumstances let us to consider leaving the convention on non-use of mines, why should the desire to abandon citizenship be dependent on those that the state has not ratified at all?
This reservation is not applicable in the context of reflection on the constitutionality of the provision, because, as Prof. Piotrowski argued, "the provisions of the constitution are autonomous and cannot be understood from the point of view of the law". The bill, which came into force at the minute erstwhile the supervision of the Office of Citizenship and the Law of Grace as Undersecretary of State at the President's Chancellery was exercised by current president Andrzej Duda, questions this autonomy.
Therefore, erstwhile asked if the state could defend people against statelessness, Prof. Piotrowski said: “Not from the point of view of constitutional rights and freedoms. If a citizen is convinced that, from the point of view of his well-being, it is essential to renounce this citizenship, then he should not be disturbed."
My callers aren't unanimous either. I asked Dr. Radosław Skowron about this issue: "In my opinion, the provision of the Citizenship Act, which makes the President's consent to the resignation of citizenship conditional on whether the applicant already has a different nationality or a promotion of its receipt, is incompatible with the constitution. The basic law provides for a kind of right to renounce citizenship without any conditions. Neither formal nor material – says the constitutionalist, publishing regularly on the Political Critic website.
President as notary
So what's the president's function in the full process? What precisely is meant by the wording in Article 137 that the president "gives his consent to the resignation of citizenship"? According to Skowron, the president is simply a notary in this case. "The President's approval should be regarded as a specified confirmation of the resignation, a declaration that the individual actually filed specified an act. The resignation must come in any form. It was so accepted that the president would confirm this in an act called consent.
Another conviction is Dr. Kamil Stępniak, president of the Center for Constitutional Law and the Monitoring of the regulation of Law. "Restricting the function of the president under Article 137 to the ceremonial function of the Reign is, in my opinion, contrary to the constitutional position of the head of state, resulting from Article 126. The Polish Citizenship Act states that the president of the Republic of Poland may consent to the waiver of citizenship, so the legislator has adopted a model of the President's discretion and, although his decision is not subject to judicial review, the refusal to consent to the waiver of citizenship does not exclude the anticipation of resubmitting an application," explains Stępniak.
When asked to supplement the Constitution with a statutory evidence of the request to submit a promesa, he comments: – Article 126(3) of the Constitution states that the head of state shall carry out his tasks in terms and on the principles set out in the Constitution and the Acts. The search for the unconstitutionality of this provision, in my view, is contrary to the strategy explanation and purposeful provisions of the Constitution. The provisions of the articles of the Constitution do not preclude detailed requirements relating to the procedure for surrendering citizenship in the Act.
Jacek Podsiad and Łukasz Łachecki after submitting a letter to the Chancellery of the president of Poland. photograph by Jakub SzafranskiAnd is the attribution of citizenship and the inability to quit the imposed membership of this structure not aimed at human rights and the freedom the constitution itself invokes?
– Rights and freedoms are restricted in the appropriate modes, only dignity cannot be limited,” says Dr. Stępniak. – We forget at least about specified a primal rule as the rule of common good. This provision constitutes a essential vector for the explanation of the provisions of the Constitution. In the collision of values on the line, the State-unit should take into account not only the peculiar interests of the individual but besides the values applicable to the State.
As Jacek writes, the comment was made. Mr President, the constitution is unconstitutional.: “A simple application of simple rules would make breaking them visible even to simple people, and this power is afraid like a priest of unholy soap.” As can be seen from divergences in constitutional opinions, the principles enshrined in the basic law do not yet have much to do with simplicity.
– The approach of the Polish legislature seems powerfully paternal. It is as if Poles were not trusted or assumed that no 1 in his right head would want to become an aparadise," says Dr. Radosław Skowron.
The State is simply a stupid institution
Accompanying the published letter to the president The subdued and the poems make us think not only about how we become citizens, what this means for us and erstwhile we can renounce this name. They besides rise questions about the foundations of the law, the scope of freedom and its limitations on post-birth acquisitions and the imposed membership of a state organisation.
Author Decision Rows Against the State, the most consistent and coherently engaged author in Poland, is not a gag or performance. A recurring criticism of “hard will of the majority, collective perceptions” and “the criterion of usefulness as the only criterion” like the buckles of early poems They subdued from the 1980s and his later, comprehensive work as a poet, prosaic, essayist, publicist, columnist and radioman – to this day.
Despite this versatility and the first consequence It besides sat down by its insightful readers is inactive considered to be a poet of the absent, silent, private – “also, of course, thanks to the efforts of Jack himself, the subdued” as said Piotr Sliwiński. He sat inactive as long as he could. Today, this request for privacy and privacy sounds peculiarly profound. Therefore, next to the texts of the poet, which we will print in our pages in the coming weeks, it is besides worth to return to all his rich works, beginning up to "seeking lawlessness in his own way".
