The right to assembly is recognized as one of the key human rights. It is essential for the functioning of the community, it is also the foundation of the democratic state. The legal regulations of the law of assembly in Poland have a tradition dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, but this right was regulated by 1990. The authentic freedom in this respect can be discussed only in the period of the Third Polish Republic, although this freedom has never meant freedom and has always been subject to limitation. The standards, which have been improved for decades, have been broken by the 2015 act, while in 2017 the Polish legislator introduced a number of solutions that made the law inconsistent and problematic in application. This article is aimed at tracing the evolution of statutory regulations from 1918–2015 and evaluating new solutions, especially those introduced in 2017, against it.

The right to assembly is a manifestation of the social possibility of influencing state organs by loud and often expressive articulation of the position of a given social group on issues important to it. It should be clearly emphasized that the right to peaceful assembly is a manifestation of freedom and is one of the core guarantees of pluralism, freedom of speech and the nation’s right to decide about self, which one considers a sovereign. Detailed rules and procedures for organizing, conducting and dissolving assemblies have been regulated in the Act of July 24, 2015 of the Act of Assembly Law2. The basic concept – the concept of assembly – has been defined in the Art. 3 of Act of the Assembly Law. According to the adopted systematics, two types of assembly were distinguished: ordinary and spontaneous. The first of these means “a grouping of persons in an open space accessible to unspecified persons in a specific place organized in order to carry our joint deliberations or for joint expression of public opinion”. The organization of the meeting can be practically unlimited. The only requirement is having full legal capacity, which excludes persons partially deprived of legal capacity, regardless of the scope of such limitation and the relationship with the subject of the organized meeting. The process of organizing assemblies is not complicated, although one should be particularly careful about the deadlines and keep in mind the “privileged status” of some other forms of assemblies. The amendment to the Act of 2016 introduced new legal solutions, although definition issues were omitted, which in this case are of fundamental importance for the correct application of the Act and guaranteeing observance of constitutional norms by public administration bodies.