Dissolution of Political Parties by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in Light of the Venice Commission’s Standards and Decisions
Dissolution of Political Parties by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in Light of the Venice Commission’s Standards and Decisions

Summary/Abstract: This text regards the issue of dissolution of political parties in Poland. The analyses concentrate on the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgements and the standards developed by the Venice Commission. The author presents main constitutional regulations regarding political parties, further she elaborates the standards worked out by the Venice Commission in the field of position and delegalization of political parties. In a later part, she indicates decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal, which were subject to the issue of dissolution of political parties, and confronts these resolutions with the standards adopted in Europe. In the conclusion, she depicts the main similarities and differences regarding approaches towards the issue at stake. The author also raises the questions of reality concerning the used mechanisms in a situation when members of political parties, who perform the functions of state bodies, violate the Constitution and regarding the paralysis of the Constitutional Tribunal, that is a guarantor of constitutionality. For the purpose of the article, terms “dissolution” and “delegalization” are used interchangeably due to stylistic reasons. In the international legal literature, the term “Constitutional Court” is equivalent to “Constitutional Tribunal”. The article uses the latter notion because this phrase is used in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland.

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