The repressive nature of selected COVID-19 regulations in the Polish legal system : the question of constitutionality

The subject of this paper is the question of the constitutionality of the sanctions for violation of restrictions and prohibitions introduced during the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus epidemic in Poland. The starting point for our considerations is the distinction made by the Polish Constitution between extraordinary and ordinary measures in dealing with dangers. Extraordinary measures (which include, inter alia, the state of a natural disaster) allow for more severe limitations of constitutional rights and freedoms than is permitted by the ordinary ones. The state of epidemic introduced in Poland on March 31, 2020, is an ordinary measure. However, the comparison between sanctions used during this state, and sanctions that are possible to be imposed during the extraordinary state of natural disaster shows that the former are more severe than the latter. This observation leads to the conclusion that the sanctions of the state of the epidemic are in breach of one of the basic rules that govern the limitation of constitutional rights and freedoms in the Polish Constitution, that is the proportionality rule.