Interventions

On June 12, 2017, a law came into force in Poland, according to which institutions should correspond with each other exclusively by electronic means. We have noticed, as an association, that the public institutions with whom we correspond often reflexively respond with a traditional letter. It’s the power of habit, which costs taxpayers a lot of money. We decided to check whether the institutions comply with the obligation of electronic correspondence and sent requests with said question to most offices of the Cracow county (a region in southern Poland with around 272,000 inhabitants). The responses do not fill us with optimism – no institution has been able to completely implement the electronic correspondence system. Officials complain primarily about a malfunctioning and non-intuitive system that often freezes and does not allow one to add attachments. In addition, for financial reasons, not all officials have an electronic signature, which makes it very difficult to send official documents electronically, because it requires the signature of a superior. Our monitoring shows that the institutions are not prepared to comply with the statutory obligation to send letters by e-mail.

At the local level

On January 3, 2018, Szczecin (the largest city in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship) signed a sponsorship agreement with the Danish company Netto LLC for placing the company’s logo in the name of a sports hall. The parties to the contract stipulate that they will not provide information about the relevant sums. That is why we sent an application to the Szczecin City Hall for a scan of the sponsorship agreement. We received it, but with the information about the amount of funding erased. Therefore, we have applied for the second time, this time only in regards to the paragraph specifying the amount that Netto will finance the Szczecin sports hall with. We are waiting for an answer.

Daily life at Watchdog Poland

Some of our daily activities are court cases with various institutions that do not want to provide us with information, despite the obligation imposed on them. Transparency doesn’t always win. An example week in January (8-12 January 2018) looked like this:

1.      January 9 – a case with the Opole Forest District in the Provincial Administrative Court. Over the last year, a controversy was aroused by the decision of the Minister of the Environment regarding tree felling in the Białowieża Primeval Forest, which is why we decided to ask all Forest Districts (over 400) about how is their tree felling conducted and who is the recipient of the wood. The Forest District did not want to give us information about the recipients of the wood, but the court annulled this decision.

2.      January 11 – The Supreme Administrative Court ordered the provincial court to re-examine the issue of sharing fire safety documentation for one of the public buildings. Earlier, the provincial court admitted that the property manager did not need to share such information.

3.      January 11 – in this case, the Supreme Administrative Court did not stand by the principle of transparency, because it considered that the applications for the co-financing of projects are private documents and do not need to be made available.

4.      January 12 – The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the prosecutor’s office does not have to provide data regarding the refusal to initiate proceedings. We were concerned about proceedings regarding the failure to provide public information. Theoretically, in Poland, one could face up to a year imprisonment for that.

5.      January 12 – The Supreme Administrative Court upheld the decision of an institution which did not want to provide us with a list of awarded officials.

6.      January 15 – The Supreme Administrative Court recognized our cassation complaint regarding the failure of one of the foundations to disclose information about their assets. The court decided that if the foundation receives public subsidies, it must act transparently.