The Limits of MP’s Amendments of Government Drafts  of Regular Bills and the Budget Act

The article concentrates on the issue of regulations of legislative proceedings in the Sejm in the scope of the right of Members of Parliament to put forward amendments to government bills. Analysis of the provisions of the Constitution of April 2, 1997 and of the Standing Orders of the Sejm of 1992 proves that the current regulations, both with reference to the so-called regular bills, as well as the draft of the budget act, create great possibilities for Members of Parliament to make changes to the government legislative proposals during the stages of the first and the second reading of a bill. This creates a serious threat to the material integrity of the projects, as well as limits the effectiveness of the policy conducted by the government. The previous amendments to the Standing Orders of the Sejm made in order to limit the influence of MP’s amendments on the contents of government projects proved to be not effective enough; therefore, the Author calls for the further modernization of legislative proceedings aimed at guaranteeing effective protection of government projects against their deformation during the legislative proceedings in the Sejm.

The subject of the present article is the analysis of the functioning of the institution of citizens’ initiative in Poland, as well as a reference to the effectiveness of the institution in question on the example of draft acts that were voted upon by the 7th term of the Polish Sejm.

Parliamentary proposals for the implementation of direct starosts and province marshals elections

Out of the executive bodies of a local self-government, only the voits (mayors, presidents of cities) are elected in direct elections, whereas on the poviat and voivodeship level, we are dealing with collective management boards, the members of which are chosen indirectly by the council of the poviat, and by the voivodeship sejmik (a regional assembly). However, this issue is not discussedparticularly frequently, in parliamentary practice there have been attempts at introducing direct elections of starosts andvoivodeship marshals, which are justified by the need of strengthening the degree of social legitimization for such offices, as well as forharmonizing the regulations which are applicable on all local government levels. The goal of this article was to proceed with a critical analysis of the projects which have been submitted within this scope, as well as to answer the question: which conditions should be met so that the introduction of a fundamental change in the starost and voivodeship martial election procedure could be assessed positively.

Constitutional complaint and allegations of breaches of the legislative procedure

I am in favour of the possibility of questioning the course of the legislative process in a constitutional complaint. The objection/the allegation could only concern the procedure of adopting a normative act containing a provision constituting the legal basis of an act of applying the law. The act of applying the law must concern the constitutional rights or freedoms of the complainant. With the current procedural regulation, I believe that there is an obligation to examine this issue ex officio by the Constitutional Tribunal. Practice shows that the Tribunal does not examine the correctness of the legislative process in the proceedings initiated by the complaint, neither on the allegation of the applicant nor ex officio.