Current legal and financial problems of the protection of historical monuments in Poland during the systemic transformations of the state

The presented reflections encompass an analysis of the current Polish model of the protection of cultural heritage against the backdrop of a reform of administrative and territorial structures, introduced at the beginning of 1999. In a systemic interpretation, the question of dividing the tasks o f the protection of historical monuments is associated with the establishment of two new units of territorial self--government (the county and the voivodeship) and a reform of the government administration at the voivodeship level, due to which the post of the voivodeship conservator of historical monuments, em bedded in Polish tradition, was expanded under the supervision of the voivode by imposing executive tasks carried out, on the one hand, ex lege in the name of the voivode, who acts as an administrative organ; on the other hand, the conservator was granted distinct material-legal tasks, which he performs as a separate organ. In turn, the rank of the General Conservator of Historical Monuments became a political function, whose holder could become the object of decisions made by the ruling coalition; as a result, changes concerning the holder of this post are possible at any given time. Consequently, the function in question is not affected by the impact of civil service legislation norms. The author goes on to analyse other determinants of the present-day Polish model of the protection of historical monuments, such as the state of social awareness, the disintegration of legislation concerning the protection of cultural heritage by means of a separation of issues dealing with the protection of cultural property from the museum system, as well as a gradual “archaisation” of legislation pertaining to the protection of cultural property, whose basic resolutions date back to 1962, the financial conditions of the state, public-legal unions, i. e. units of territorial self-government and society, the subjectivisationof units, a reform of the administrative court system, etc. The above-presented text was read in 1999 at a ceremonial inauguration of the Little Poland Cultural Heritage Days, held in amanor house in Modlnica near Cracow, and organised by regional self-government authorities