Social and economic rights in the constitution of the Republic of Poland

The opinion polls carried out recently reveal that the majority of Poles await a soon arrival of a new constitution. This legal act is believed to be of significant importance to the citizens. The most important of all seems to be a wish for the constitution to secure a wide range of social and economic rights and a right to work in particular. Therefore, the majority of drafts of the new constitution which have been submitted to the Constitutional Commission of the National Assembly, contain long lists of social and economic rights. Apart from the drafts proposed by the President of the Republic of Poland and the Confederation of Independent Poland whose authors have decided that the above mentioned rights should be included within the framework of ordinary bills and in the Senate draft, there are others in which the problem of those rights was deliberately not worked out. The reason for such an action or rather lack of action was to detach and depart from the models contained in the socialist constitution. In drafts proposed by the Democratic Left Alliance, the Polish Peasant Party and the Labour Union as well as the Democratic Union and Solidarity, those rights were clearly and thoroughly defined. At the same time the guarantees of those rights and the manner in which they could be implemented were offered. The writers of the new constitution and the members of the constitutional commission do not differ greatly in their view on the approach to the social and economic constitutional rights. Very few renown politicians or lawyers decide to assume a position contrary to the public opinion beliefs. Disputes concern rather the actual rights included in the list and the nature of the formulated provisions. Therefore, it can be assumed that the new constitution shall contain a range of broadly defined social and economic rights. Such an approach is understandable because usually the shape of a constitution results from a certain political, social and economic situation in which the constitutional legislators who formulate or at least attempt to formulate such a list of rights and liberties take care to secure an effective protection for themselves as well as for the citizens they represent.Digitalizacja i deponowanie archiwalnych zeszytów RPEiS sfinansowane przez MNiSW w ramach realizacji umowy nr 541/P-DUN/201