In October, some of the key provisions of Poland’s Assemblies Act will lose legal force. Despite this, the Ministry of Administration and Digitization began drafting a new assembly law only in the end of March, and it must still work its way through the entire legislature.

In mid-September 2014, the Constitutional Tribunal issued a groundbreaking judgment against certain elements of the Assemblies Act. It pointed to a lack of provisions regulating spontaneous assemblies, the absence of an effective procedure for canceling an order prohibiting an assembly, and regulations that obliged municipal bodies to separate assemblies that take place simultaneously.

The judgment rendered certain provisions of the Assemblies Act ineffective from October 2015, but it was not until very recently that the Ministry of Administration and Digitization presented a draft law pursuant to the constitutional court's ruling.

Concerns

At the request of the ministry, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights reviewed the draft law and presented opinions. "We have concerns about the new Assemblies Act," said Dr. Adam Bodnar, HFHR’s deputy president.

The proposed law introduces a division between marches and stationary assemblies. Both types of public gatherings are to be subject to separate sets of organizational procedures. A major novelty proposed in the draft is the changed time limit for notifying authorities about a stationary assembly (not less than 12 hours before the start).

"With this time limit changed, stationary assemblies will be treated much like spontaneous assemblies, and HFHR has been long advocating for the legal recognition of the latter," said Michał Szwast, a lawyer for the organization.

The Helsinki Foundation wants the notice deadline pushed to six hours before the start, which would allow more spontaneous demonstrations while also giving police more than enough time to prepare, as such assemblies rarely require traffic diversion.

What is a march?

The Helsinki Foundation also expressed concerns over certain regulations that apply to marches. For instance, it argues that the law's definition of a march is defective because it is too broad.

"In the draft law, the definition of a march will apply equally to people marching in the woods, a park or car-free city zones. There is no need to regulate such marches in a law on assemblies, for example to oblige the organizers to abide by the official notice rule," Dr. Bodnar said.

The organization noted that the extension of the minimum period for giving notice of a march disrupting traffic, from three working days to six, does not comply with the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, because the court had ruled that a time limit of three working days was too long and violated the freedom of assembly.

Judicial review

The Helsinki Foundation also criticized the procedure governing appeals against decisions denying assembly requests. Although the newly proposed rules guarantee that a provincial governor decides an appeal before the date of the planned assembly, the draft law makes no mention of judicial review.

"The new law offers no such guarantee in respect of judicial review decisions, whereas the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and guidelines of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are adamant that interested parties must be given an opportunity to have decisions prohibiting an assembly judicially reviewed before the planned assembly date," said Szwast.

The Helsinki Foundation proposed a change to this procedure, which would give organizers the right to request judicial review of a local authority’s decision and obtain a judge’s ruling before the assembly date.