Approving commentary to the verdict of the Provincial Administrative Court in Olsztyn dated 14 March 2013, file no. II SA/Ol 196/13

Samo przyznanie inicjatywy uchwałodawczej grupie mieszkańców w niczym nie ogranicza uprawnień samych radnych czy rady, bowiem przedłożenie takiego projektu uchwały skutkować będzie nie obowiązkiem jej przyjęcia, lecz rozpoznania jak każdej inicjatywy. Zatem w tym zakresie nie dochodzi do żadnego pozbawienia czy ograniczenia kompetencji samego organu stanowiącego – rady gminy. Ponadto przyznanie inicjatywy uchwałodawczej również grupie osób posiadających czynne prawo wyborcze nie narusza w sposób istotny prawa, gdyż zawarta kompetencja dla inicjatywy obywatelskiej pozostaje „w granicach prawa” wynikającego z art. 169 ust. 4 Konstytucji RP, rozumianego jako generalne uprawnienie do kształtowania treści statutu.It must be stated that the voted verdict of the Provincial Administrative Court in Olsztyn is correct; according to the verdict, granting resolution-making initiative to a group of persons who enjoy active electoral rights does not violate the law because the civic resolution-making initiative is within the “limits of law” arising from Art. 169 (4) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland as a general right to shape the content of a statute. The very granting of resolution-making initiative to a group of residents does not limit in any way the rights of councilors or the council because submission of a draft resolution does not result in the requirement to adopt it but only the requirement to examine it – as in the case of any other initiative. Consequently, there is no deprivation or limitation of the competence of the decisionmaking body – the commune council. Moreover, I believe that questioning the provisions of a statute only on the basis of the claim that they do not have a faithful and detailed origin in an act is an error in the legal art because it is wrong to claim that a commune does not have a detailed basis separately for each provision of its statute while overlooking the general basis of all provisions of statutes contained in the relevant regulations: Art. 164 (4) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and Art. 3 (1), Art. 18 (2) (1), Art. 21 (1), and Art. 22 (1) of the Act on commune-level local government. A commune statute can regulate all matters related to the system of government in the commune that are not expressly regulated in the act, as long as it is not contradictory to the provisions of the act. What is more, I believe that not only a group of residents have the right to resolution- making initiative granted in the statute, but also that such a right can be granted to, e.g. a general meeting of an association or a resolution-making body of a political party that has a local unit in the territory of a specific unit of local government