MAIN POINTs
1
In a video posted on August 21, 2026, President Karol Nawrocki announced that of the 22 bills he had referred to the Sejm, only one had been passed, while the remaining 21 had been left stuck in the chamber’s legislative “drawer” with no genuine work done on them.
2
At the Campus Polska Przyszłości event on August 29, 2026, Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty openly admitted that he had personally blocked three of the President’s bills — the Polish Defense Investment Fund (“Polish SAFE 0%”), “Cheap Electricity −33%,” and the bill restoring the right to a court and to the examination of one’s case without undue delay — invoking what he called a “Speaker’s veto.”
3
No such institution as a “Speaker’s veto” exists in Polish law — a fact the Speaker himself publicly conceded in November 2025. Under Article 34(8) of the Rules of Procedure, the only lawful way to halt a bill runs through the Legislative Committee and a three-fifths majority, and none of the three bills was handled that way.
4
By blocking the bills, the Speaker in practice nullifies the President’s right of legislative initiative and — by making a bill’s progress depend on the political identity of its sponsor — strikes at the impartiality of public authorities, the prohibition of discrimination in political life, and the principle of political pluralism.
On Friday, August 21, 2026, Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki posted a video on the X platform devoted to the fate of his legislative initiatives. He announced that, of the 22 bills he had referred to the Sejm — Poland’s lower house of parliament — the chamber had passed one, while the remaining 21:
[had] become stuck in the Sejm. No genuine work was undertaken on them and no better solutions were put forward in their place. Most of them were simply consigned to the Sejm’s legislative drawer.
The President renewed his appeal to the ruling coalition and to the Speaker of the Sejm to take these bills out of the so called legislative drawer and give them further course, in accordance with the Rules of Procedures of the Sejm.
“This is the so-called Speaker’s veto” — the Speaker of the Sejm admits that he is blocking the President’s bills
On Saturday, August 29, 2026, at the Campus Polska Przyszłości (Poland of the Future Campus – a summer camp-style political and civic festival linked with current ruling party in Poland) event in Olsztyn, one of the participants asked the Speaker how he differed from Elżbieta Witek, a figure associated with the practice of the Sejm’s legislative drawer. Włodzimierz Czarzasty’s answer deserves to be quoted in full:
President Nawrocki’s 23 bills, all of them are being processed, all of them in turn. But three have been blocked. By me. This is the so-called Speaker’s veto. And I will say this: if I had to repeat it, I would repeat it.
These are the three bills: the bill on the Polish Defense Investment Fund (the so-called Polish SAFE 0%), “Cheap Electricity −33%”, and the bill on restoring the right to a court and to the examination of one’s case without undue delay.
The point is that in Polish law the Speaker’s veto does not exist. No such institution is provided for by the Constitution, by any statute, or even by the Rules of Procedure of the Sejm.
(…)
Source of cover photo: iStock
