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 by local governments would remain invisible. Fortunately, the Sejm amended the government’s proposal, adopting the 500 PLN threshold supported by civil society organizations, including ours. The Senate went even further and proposed full publication with no threshold at all. The bill has now returned to the Sejm, and we hope the Senate’s amendments will be upheld and that the President will sign the act into law.

At the local level

Our organization supports the Polish association Kultura w Pracy (Culture at Work), which is running the #ZnamyStawki (#WeKnowTheRates) campaign demanding full transparency of artists’ fees and the costs of publicly funded cultural events. Its leaders, Dawid Mateusz and Patryk Kosenda, stress that the lack of openness in the cultural sector deepens inequalities, undermines trust, and makes it harder for artists to negotiate fair contracts. They point out that the current law—especially Article 29a, introduced in 2016, which allows fees below the public-procurement threshold to be kept secret—mainly protects the highest earners while depriving emerging artists of essential negotiating tools. In their view, transparency around pay would bring Poland closer to standards practiced in countries such as those in Scandinavia, where rates for artistic work are publicly available and standardized. The campaign is also connected to the upcoming Central Register of Contracts, although activists fear that cultural institutions may still use Article 29a to delay disclosing information. The association has been submitting information requests to major festivals and receiving initial responses, while also gaining broad support from artists across different fields. Founded in 2024, Kultura w Pracy combines artistic activities with a mission to improve working conditions in the cultural sector and promote equality. The organization plans to publish a “transparency handbook,” run workshops across Poland, and expand the campaign, encouraging both institutions and artists to disclose their fees and support the movement for openness.

Daily life at Watchdog Poland

Our organization has spent the past two weeks focused on a case that has just reached a crucial stage in a years-long legal battle: a court has upheld the dismissal of an investigation into the unlawful transfer of voter data to the state-owned postal service, Poczta Polska, during the attempted “postal presidential election” of 2020. This decision concerns 268 combined cases—part of a much broader effort led by the watchdog NGO Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska, which between 2020 and 2024 filed 477 criminal complaints regarding the incident.

The controversy dates back to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Polish government attempted to replace the scheduled May 2020 presidential election with an all-postal vote, even though no legal basis for such an election existed at the time. Despite the absence of a valid statute authorizing this process, the government—through the Prime Minister and regional governors—ordered municipalities to hand over their complete voter registries to Poczta Polska. Many local governments refused, arguing that sharing personal data without a legal foundation would violate both Polish law and EU data-protection rules (GDPR/RODO). Others, however, complied under political pressure, leading to mass data transfers affecting millions of citizens.

For years, prosecutors either refused to open investigations or quickly discontinued them. Courts initially sided with prosecutors, but from 2022 onward several courts began ruling in favour of Watchdog Polska, stressing that political will cannot replace a legal mandate, and that authorities must act strictly within the bounds of the law—regardless of who issues the instructions.

Because many complaints concerned the same conduct, 268 cases were merged into a single proceeding and, due to procedural rules, assigned to the District Court in Szamotuły. Early on, the court agreed with the NGO that it should be treated as a party harmed by the unlawful data transfer, allowing the case to move forward. In February 2025, prosecutors sent to the court the NGO’s complaint against the decision to close the investigation.

However, on 20 November 2025, the Szamotuły court upheld the prosecutor’s decision to discontinue the case. Prosecutors had relied on a controversial “abolition act” adopted by Poland’s previous government, which grants blanket immunity to officials involved in organizing the 2020 postal election—effectively preventing any criminal accountability. Watchdog Polska argued that the act violates EU law, especially the GDPR’s requirement that member states ensure effective safeguards against unlawful processing of personal data. Under EU law, national courts must set aside domestic provisions that conflict with European regulations. Nonetheless, the Szamotuły court refused to do so and accepted the prosecutor’s reasoning.

The NGO stresses that the failed postal election caused measurable harm: voter data was transferred without legal grounds, exposed to unclear security risks, and used in an operation that ultimately never took place. No ballots were sent, but the data breach cannot be undone.

After receiving the written justification, Watchdog Polska plans to consider further legal steps, including actions at the European level, where the incompatibility between the abolition act and EU data-protection standards may face stricter scrutiny.