The Urgent Procedure in Theory and Practice of the Legislative Process under the Rules of the Constitution of 2nd April 1997

Legislative procedure for urgent bills constitutes a crucial prescriptive instrument that is useful to a government in parliamentary system to influence the course of legislative process. In Poland the urgent procedure was introduced by virtue of provisions of the Small Constitution 1992, as a factor that serves to prevent the lengthiness of parliamentary procedures and obstructive actions of parliamentary opposition towards government legislation program. On the basis of decisions taken by the Constitution adopted on 2nd April 1997 and as in the previous legal situation, The Council of Ministers has the exclusive right to initiate legislative proceeding as a matter of urgency. In accordance with the 123rd article, para 1 of the Constitution, urgency clause cannot be applied against tax bills, bills governing elections, draft laws regulating systems and competence of public authorities and drafts of law codes. What is more, on the basis of separate articles, budget bills are excluded from using the urgency process. The basic drawback of the urgency process in Polish political solutions is the lack of constitutional deadlines that would indicate the pace of Sejm activities concerning the urgency clause. In such a situation, the actual pace of investigation of urgent bills in the Sejm depends on the lower house’s will and its bodies. As a result, in practice of Polish parliamentary law, the urgency process is rarely applied by the Council of Ministers, particulary when the government has stable support of Sejm’s majority at its disposal. In such a case, the government may stimulate the pace of parliamentary activities concerning its bills with the use of political pressures nad with no need of using the urgency process.