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 served as a minister in the current government and was described by the Prime Minister as his “right hand”. The Tribunal has been in crisis since 2015, when the previous government packed it with politically connected judges; the European Court of Human Rights has since ruled that it does not meet the standards of an independent court. The signatories argue that the answer cannot be for the new majority to simply “take it back” with its own loyalists. A 2024 law would have barred recent office-holders from the bench for four years — it was blocked by the President and never came into force, but the NGOs say Parliament should follow that standard anyway. Their point is not Berek’s competence or integrity, but perception: justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. They have asked him to withdraw and asked Parliament to choose a candidate with no visible ties to government.  

At the local level

Fees, blocks and silence: how three Polish mayors lost to their residents

Three cases from small Polish towns this summer show where the right to information is really tested: not in ministries, but in town halls. In Hajnówka, the mayor demanded around €210 from Marta Iwańczuk, a member of Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, who wanted to look at two months of the town’s invoices — and refused access until she paid. A regional administrative court ruled this a flagrant breach of the law and fined him. In Białobrzegi, the town hall blocked a local watchdog group on its official Facebook page; the Ombudsman called this a form of censorship, the mayor adopted new moderation rules, and then blocked the group again anyway. In Ośno Lubuskie, the mayor left request after request from a residents’ association unanswered, claiming they were “abusing” the right to information. The association was co-founded by another Watchdog member, Alicja Matwiejczuk. The Supreme Administrative Court heard twelve of the mayor’s appeals in a single day and dismissed all of them: whether a document is public depends on what it contains, not on who is asking, and silence is never a lawful answer. None of these cases made national headlines. All of them were won by ordinary residents who knew their rights and were prepared to go to court.

Daily life at Watchdog Poland

Poland’s new public contracts register: one month in

On 1 July Poland launched its Central Register of Contracts (CRU) — an open online database where every public body, from ministries to village schools, must publish basic details of each contract it signs: the parties, the subject, the value and the dates. After one month it already holds over 158,000 contracts worth PLN 10.8 billion (about €2.5 billion). The law was passed back in 2021 but its launch was postponed several times, and last year the Finance Ministry tried to exempt all contracts below PLN 10,000 — which would have hidden roughly 70–80% of local-government spending. Watchdog Poland spent months fighting that proposal, with a petition, an appeal signed by over 40 organisations and a study of what the threshold would conceal. Parliament ultimately removed the threshold altogether: every contract, regardless of value, must now be published.

Watchdog’s first assessment of the live register is positive but sober. The CRU does not cover municipal companies, which handle much of local spending on water, waste and transport. It contains no contracts signed before 1 July, and no full text of any contract — for that you still need a freedom-of-information request. Some entries have already vanished without explanation, because the system keeps no change log. And the register offers no alerts, RSS feed or data export, so a local journalist who wants to track their own town has to re-run the same search by hand every week. The register is a real step forward, the authors conclude, but a tool, not an answer — and from August, when the first 30-day publication deadlines expire, the real work of checking who is complying begins.