The Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) violates the country’s constitution. That should lead to the KPP being outlawed, though the TK itself faces questions over its own legality, which complicates the situation.
“There is no place in the Polish legal system for a party that glorifies criminals and communist regimes responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings, including our compatriots, Polish citizens,” said Constitutional Tribunal (TK) judge Krystyna Pawłowicz in the justification for the ruling.
The decision comes almost exactly five years after Poland’s former justice minister and prosecutor general, Zbigniew Ziobro, submitted a request to the TK to have the KPP outlawed. Last month, the current president, Karol Nawrocki, also filed his own such application.
The KPP was established in 2002 and claims to be the successor to the Communist Party that existed in Poland before World War Two, rather than the Soviet-backed Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) that ruled Poland after the war until 1989. The KPP has no elected representative and very little public visibility.
However, in his notification to the TK, Ziobro argued that the KPP “has identical goals to other communist parties in the 20th century”, including introducing a system “modelled on Soviet Russia” with “totalitarian methods and practices”.
Nawrocki likewise wrote that the KPP’s aims and activities are “contrary to the legal order of Poland”, and that “communist ideology is directed against fundamental human values and the traditions of European and Christian civilisation”.
On Wednesday, after hearings to consider Ziobro and Nawrocki’s applications, the TK found that “the goals and activities of the Communist Party of Poland are inconsistent with the provisions of the constitution”, specifically articles 11 and 13, said Pawłowicz.
Article 11 states that political parties must “be founded on the principle of… the equality of Polish citizens” and shall seek to “influence the formulation of the policy of the state by democratic means”.
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