Interventions A former minister on the Constitutional Tribunal? Nine NGOs say no Watchdog Poland has joined eight other civil society organisations — including the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Batory Foundation and Panoptykon — in a joint statement opposing the nomination of Dr Maciej Berek to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. Berek, a lawyer, until recently…

Poland’s legal profession is not one profession but six, each with its own bar, its own traineeship and its own entry rules. An advocate (adwokat) and an attorney-at-law (radca prawny) do similar work under separate self-governing bodies; notaries, court enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges each form another distinct group. Moving between them is legally possible.…

Interventions After five years of efforts — with our first freedom-of-information requests submitted to the Polish government — the European Commission has disclosed the agreement with Pfizer/BioNTech concerning the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. However, the document remains partially redacted. The withheld information includes prices, payment and settlement terms, manufacturing and technological details, and some provisions…

Can a sports club owned by a local government conceal salaries funded by public money? Most clubs say yes. We asked eight local government-owned sports companies about their salaries. They all have one thing in common—none of them opted for full transparency. In February, we wrote about our public information requests to Śląsk Wrocław and…

Interventions The President signed the anti-SLAPP law In May, we wrote about our appeal to parliamentarians to adopt the anti-SLAPP law as soon as possible. In June, once the amended bill had passed through the Sejm, we appealed to the President of Poland to sign it without delay. And it worked — on 19 June,…

Interventions Civil Society Calls for Stronger Anti-SLAPP Protections in Poland  The deadline for transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1069 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings expires on 7 May 2026. Poland has still not adopted…

Interventions The schedule of the First President of the Supreme Court is public information – a landmark ruling by the Voivodeship Administrative Court. The Supreme Court refused to disclose the calendar of its First President, considering it an internal document. We challenged this response in court and won. The court confirmed that, in the part…

Interventions With hunting regards Is it possible to find out how the regional boards of the Polish Hunting Association operate and how they spend funds related to hunting management? We decided to check by submitting information requests to all 49 regional boards. Most either refused to respond or remained silent—only after more than a year…

Interventions Transparency of salaries in municipal football clubs As Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, we asked GKS Katowice and Piast Gliwice about salaries in clubs financed with public funds. In Katowice, we obtained specific data – the club disclosed the remuneration of members of the management board and the supervisory board. In the case of Piast…

Interventions Together with other civil society organisations, we submitted comments on the draft law implementing the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). Although some of the earlier proposals have been taken into account, the document fails to meet the standards arising from EU law in many key areas. The draft focuses primarily on the current model…

Interventions For several months, our organization has been actively advocating to ensure that the contract registers, which public institutions in Poland will soon be required to maintain, include information on all contracts they conclude. The government, however, proposed a bill introducing a publication threshold of 10,000 PLN, meaning that more than 70% of contracts concluded…

Interventions Central Register of Contracts For the past four years, we have been advocating for the law adopted by the Polish Parliament in 2021 — which requires all public institutions to maintain a central register of contracts — to become a real tool for overseeing public finances. In the meantime, another election has taken place…

Interventions Together with the Institute of Public Finance, we submitted a petition to the Chancellery of the Prime Minister regarding the Central Register of Contracts, which is to come into force in Poland in January 2026. The Central Register of Contracts (CRU) is an ICT system created for entities performing public tasks, whose purpose is…

It is with great sadness that we bid farewell to Zenon Michajłowski, one of the founders and members of the Watchdog Poland Civic Network. He was with us from the very beginning and remained actively interested and involved in transparency issues throughout his life. Few people in Poland can boast such a long and consistent…

  Interventions Together with other organizations, we appealed to, among others, the Speakers of the Sejm and Senate as well as parliamentary groups and circles, for the swift disclosure of information about the candidates for the position of President of the Supreme Audit Office (the highest state audit body in Poland) and for the organization…