Polish Family’s Struggle Continues as Klaman Daughters Remain in Swedish Foster Care

The case of the Klaman family remains unresolved. In July 2024, Swedish officials operating on Polish territory (acting with the consent of a Polish court and the Polish government) removed the children and transported them to Sweden. Since then, the Polish children have had no contact with their biological family, live with Swedish foster families who do not speak Polish, and are separated from one another.

Notified by the girls’ parents after their removal to Sweden, lawyers from the Ordo Iuris Institute continue to fight for the children’s return to Poland. Despite the dismissal by the Regional Court in Opole of the appeal against the decision of the court of first instance to discontinue the proceedings due to a lack of Polish jurisdiction as per EU law, we are using all available legal means, believing that European standards of family life protection will also be applied in the case of the Klaman family.

Our primary goal is to ensure that, until the proceedings concerning the parents’ parental authority are concluded, all the children are placed with a single foster family related to them and living in Poland—their aunt and uncle (whom the children know well and feel comfortable with). We are currently working on motions to the Polish Ombudsman for Children and the Ombudsman for Civil Rights to file extraordinary appeals with the Polish Supreme Court in the proceedings concerning the enforcement of the Swedish authorities’ decision, due to the Polish district court’s violation of the freedoms and human and civil rights set out in the Constitution, and the fact that the Polish court’s ruling grossly violated the law. 

The girls’ parents continues to count on the help of the Polish public authorities in ensuring the safety of their family. Otherwise, their only option will be to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.

The case concerns a Polish family who had been living in Sweden for years. The local Swedish authorities took the eldest of their four daughters away from her parents. The reason was that the girl (as she herself admitted) lied to the school counselor, claiming that her parents were abusing her. In reality, she only had to do light housework, such as emptying the dishwasher or walking the dog.

The parents then came to Poland with their three remaining daughters. However, here too, the Swedish authorities (with the permission of the Polish court) took the children away and placed them in foster care in Sweden. This happened even though the Polish court did not see any need to separate the children from their parents.

“My children have been separated from each other in a foreign country for a year; they have no contact with each other. They are forgetting their native language, and the social services no longer respond to emails,” emphasizes Robert Klaman, the father of the girls who were taken away.

In Poland, legal assistance is now provided to the family by the Ordo Iuris Institute. Lawyers submitted a request to the Ministry of Justice for information on the actions taken in this case and for intervention. The Ministry stated that it had completed “the tasks related to the Swedish party’s request” and indicated that Swedish courts and institutions had exclusive jurisdiction over the children of Polish citizens. In response to a request from opposition MP Michał Wójcik, the Polish Ministry of Justice indicated that it did not see any “gross violation of the EU legal order” in this case. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its willingness to cooperate with Ordo Iuris but has not yet taken any effective action. The Ordo Iuris Institute also prepared a petition to the prime ministers of Poland and Sweden, appealing for intervention in the Klaman family case.

Unfortunately, the actions of the Polish Ministry of Justice seem to be in line with the announcement made by attorney Bartosz Lewandowski in an interview at the beginning of September last year. In February 2024, the Polish Deputy Minister of Justice was to meet with representatives of various European embassies. According to Lewandowski, it could be inferred from the Ministry’s statement that at this meeting, the deputy minister assured that under the new coalition government, Poland would no longer be a refuge for families fleeing abuse by social services such as the Norwegian Barnevernet, the German Jugendamt, or other institutions—including those repeatedly condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, such as Barnevernet.

Furthermore, according to Lewandowski, the Klaman family case clearly shows that Poland is no longer even a refuge for its own citizens after they return from several years of emigration.

“That’s how it used to work. I remember before 2015, when we handled such cases. There were even bizarre situations where officials from other countries came to Poland without any court ruling. They simply showed their ID and obtained the consent of the Polish authorities or the consent of Polish institutions, such as care facilities, to take the child away,” said the lawyer.

In the case of the Klaman family, the most controversial aspect was that the Swedish court only initiated legal proceedings to remove the three youngest daughters from Ewa and Robert Klaman after the couple had returned to Poland with them. Despite this, and despite a positive report on the Klaman family issued by a Polish probation officer after the case was transferred to the District Court in Nysa by the Polish Ministry of Justice, that court declared a lack of national jurisdiction and decided to immediately transfer the children to Sweden. At the end of June 2024, the children were taken from their parents with the assistance of the Polish police, and at the beginning of July, they were sent back to Sweden and placed in three different foster families.

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