The issue of vetting has for many years stirred up much emotion in Poland and is closely related to the process of decommunization. In the history of the Third Republic of Poland, lustration was the cause of serious political crises, an example of which was the dismissal of the government of Jan Olszewski. A breakthrough event was adopting the lustration law in 1997, which laid the groundwork for a reliable approach to lustration in Poland. Despite the passage of years and amendments to the regulations, it still seems necessary to amend the law to comply with constitutional rights, such as the right to due process, the right to be heard, the right to defense, and the presumption of innocence. The article indicates the problems related to vetting and reports changes on the example of vetting by Kazimierz Kujda.

The process of settling accounts with the communist past is an answer to the question for countries that are leaving communism through peaceful negotiations with the authorities. In the case of the Polish control system, the first non-communist introduction by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, which is used as the socalled ‘thick line’, it leaked that the problem of lustration and decommunization had been postponed. In the subsequent years of the 1990s, verification tests among people performing the most important functions ended in failure. The most serious consequences occurred in the attempt to implement the lustration resolution by the Sejm in May 1992, which resulted from the failure of Jan Olszewski’s actions. The first lustration act was issued in Poland only in 1997.

Different European democracies react differently to anti-democratic political trends, including the growing power of ‘dubious’ political parties and their leaders. This article focuses on the situation of the Czech Republic and, by tracing the evolution within the party system after 1989, in the light of the assumptions of the concept of militant democracy, seeks to establish whether anti-democratic actions can be prevented by using non-democratic methods and means. Since 2013 we can observe radical changes in the party system and the changing dynamics of party competition. The authors of the article assume that while decommunization remains an important process of shaping the democratic identity of Czechs, it is simultaneously generating Eurosceptic sentiment and leading to an increase in the popularity of parties referring to the communist legacy. The analysis is conducted using the institutional-legal method.