W parlamentarnych systemach rządów egzystencja rządu zależy od parlamentu, który powołuje rząd i może go odwołać. Celem tekstu jest dokonanie analizy porównawczej sposobu powoływania rządu w 11 postkomunistycznych państwach Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej, które są członkami Unii Europejskiej, w oparciu o przepisy konstytucji. Pytanie badawcze dotyczy tego, czy konstytucje pozostawiają prezydentom, którzy formalnie powołują rządy, możliwość realnego wpływu na obsadę stanowiska premiera. W efekcie umieszczam kraje na skali, na której krańcach leżą te, w których prezydent w zasadzie nie ma możliwości powołania rządu wbrew woli większości parlamentarnej (Czechy, Bułgaria, Estonia, Polska i Słowenia), oraz te, w których konstytucja formalnie pozostawia prezydentowi możliwości oddziaływania na skład rządu (Litwa, Węgry i Słowacja). Pozostałe kraje (Chorwacja, Rumunia, Łotwa) znajdują się pomiędzy tymi krańcami.
EN
The existence of cabinet in parliamentary systems of government depends on the parliament, which appoints and dismiss cabinet. Aim of the article is comparative analyze of cabinet appointment method in 11 post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe, which are members of European Union, based on constitutional provisions. Research question is whether constitution leave the presidents, who formally nominate the governments, the possibility of real influence on the cast of prime minister post. As a result, I position constitutions on a two dimension scale in which the ends are countries in which the president in principle has no possibility appoint the cabinet against the will of the parliamentary majority (the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland and Slovenia) and countries where the constitution formally leaves the President ability to influence the composition of the government (Lithuania, Hungary and Slovakia). Other countries (Croatia, Romania, Latvia) are in between these extremes.
Sądy konstytucyjne, by wykonywać swą funkcję kontroli konstytucyjności prawa powinny być niezależne od podmiotów stanowiących to prawo. Niezależność można zoperacjonalizować jako mechanizm obsadzania i zmiany składu sądów określony w przepisach, a także jako stopień trudności zmiany tych przepisów. W tej perspektywie można opisać zakres niezależności polskiego sądu konstytucyjnego na tle sądów w innych państwach Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej. Można stwierdzić, że jest pole do zwiększenia niezależności polskiego sądu, np. poprzez zwiększenie różnorodności podmiotów uprawnionych do obsadzania składu sądu czy wprowadzenie regularnej rotacji na stanowiskach sędziów w określonych terminach (w miejsce kadencji indywidualnych), jednak w największym stopniu niezależności sądu zagraża zgodna lub niezgodna z konstytucją ingerencja w skład i ustrój sądu konstytucyjnego, dokonywana w interesie większości rządzącej, która dokonuje tej ingerencji.
EN
Constitutional courts, in order to perform their function of the constitutional review, should be independent of the creator of that law. Independence can be operationalized as a mechanism for filling and changing the composition of courts as defined in the legislation, and also as a difficulty in changing these rules. In this perspective one can describe the extent of independence of the Polish constitutional court against the background of courts in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It can be said that there is a field to increase the independence of the Polish court, eg by increasing the diversity of entities entitled to fill the court or by introducing regular rotation in the positions of the judges at specific dates (instead of individual mandates). But the greatest degree of court independence threatens, compliant with constitution or inconstitutional interference in the composition and constitutional court system, done in the interest of the ruling majority that makes this interference.
In January 2011 the Sejm adopted the Election Code which changes, inter alia, some elements of electoral system and the procedure for election of the second chamber of parliament - the Senate. Among the most important novelties was replacing of former 40 constituencies with 2-4 members with 100 single-member constituencies. An election formula has remained intact; it is still a simple majority vote. As regards the adjustment of the size of constituencies (i.e. the number of seats to be taken in a constituency) to the number of inhabitants, the former electoral law provided for a relatively imprecise procedure of distribution of seats between 16 provinces and, then, between constituencies. The Election Code introduces single-member constituencies; therefore it requires that the boundaries of constituencies (and, as a result, the number of its inhabitants) be adjusted to the number of seats, i.e. one seat. To prevent the necessity of changing the boundaries of constituencies in every election, the Code provides a margin of flexibility: to each constituency it should fall at least 50% of the norm of representation and no more than 200% of that norm (the norm of representation equals to the number of the country's population divided by 100). The Code also includes a provision guaranteeing that the number of constituencies created in each province will be no less than the integral number resulting from division of the number of inhabitants of the province by the norm of representation. One possible result of the introduction of single-member constituencies is that the most represented party will lose some seats to smaller parties or to independent candidates. Should the election of 2007 be held on the basis of the Election Code, the Civic Platform would probably lose 4 seats to the Law and Justice Party. Another effect of changing the size of constituencies will be solving the problem with wasted votes. Previously, under multi-member constituencies, a voter was able to (but didn't have to) choose as many candidates as was the number of seats to be obtained in the constituency. However, the voters have not always made use of that possibility. The bigger was the number of seats to be obtained in a constituency, the smaller was the proportion of voters indicating the whole possible number of candidates. During the elections in 2001, 2005 and 2007, about 24% of votes were wasted in this way. The Election Code has filled the loopholes in the existing law. Previously, the law has not provided for what to do when the number of candidates standing for a seat in a by-election equals the number of seats to be obtained in that election. In practice, elections were held, but voters had no opportunity to vote against candidates. By contrast, the Code provides for the possibility of casting a negative vote.
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