Speaker Kuchciński: Poland - a free country of free people. The law of the Polish government in exile was made public in the Sejm

October 4, 2017
10:23 am

- Today in the Sejm we announce a very important decision. We are restoring to Poland the legal achievements of the authorities of our country, which were active in exile during World War II. In this way, we preserve the continuity of the Polish statehood," said Sejm Speaker Marek Kuchciński during the publication of official journals from the years 1939-1990.

- The 1939-90 Law Journals of the Polish Government in Exile and the laws they contain were hidden from the Poles for 45 years of communism, and then ignored in silence for 27 years of the Third Republic. Today it has become open and accessible to all Poles in the Parliamentary ISAP database.

According to the Speaker of the Sejm it is an important symbolic sign of building our statehood on the foundation of the independent Poland. The Marshal emphasized that the laws of the Republic of Poland made by the representatives of the Nation must be open and universally accessible. Such a principle has functioned in our parliamentary system for over half a millennium.

- By publishing today's historical normative acts in the official Internet System of Legal Acts (ISAP), currently operated by the Chancellery of the Sejm, we express a general change in the perception of our state identity," Kuchciński said. - The official journals published today and the normative acts and other documents they contain are an extremely valuable source of knowledge about our history. They will not only broaden the knowledge of all those who use these databases. But they will also shape our state consciousness, the roots of which must grow only from a truly sovereign state. Poland - a free country of free people - said the Speaker of the Sejm.

During the conference the Speaker was accompanied by the Prime Minister Beata Szydło. - This is a very important day. It is a good moment for us, on the eve of the jubilee of the centenary of Poland's regaining independence, to remind about it and to make these actions of the Polish authorities available to the countrymen.

The originator of the project, Prof. Jan Majchrowski, recalled that Stalin's plans included the occupation of all of East-Central Europe, including Poland, and in order to carry them out it was necessary to form a puppet government completely subordinate to the USSR, which did not recognize the laws created by the Polish government-in-exile. As a result, two dailies functioned in parallel.

Jan Majchrowski stressed that making public does not mean publishing. This is because normative acts and other documents have already been published in the respective official journals issued in exile. Making them public now does not in any way change their legal status, and therefore today's ceremony does not constitute any change of the law in force in Poland.

The current publication of the logs does not change the existing legal status, but fills a gap that has been unjustifiably maintained, covering Polish legislation during World War II and the postwar activities of Polish authorities in exile. New versions of the aforementioned information systems will clearly separate this segment from other normative acts.