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On Friday, July 17, the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, is set to elect a new Commissioner for Human Rights (Poland’s ombudsman), and on Wednesday, July 22, the candidacy will be assessed by Poland’s Senate. However, several days earlier, on July 14, a public hearing of both candidates for the office was held, in which a representative of the Ordo Iuris Institute took part.

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In response to questions from Ordo Iuris, the candidate of the Civic Coalition and the Left for the office of Commissioner for Human Rights, Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, declared that the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued against Poland carry more weight for her than the provisions of the Polish Constitution, and that “the Constitutional Tribunal cannot be a skeleton key for eliminating the rulings of the European courts.”

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The candidate, nominated by both left-wing parties forming Donald Tusk’s government, stated repeatedly that “the Commissioner is bound by the judgments of the European courts,” from which she drew the conclusion that she is not bound, among other things, by the Constitutional Tribunal’s 2020 judgment prohibiting the intentional taking of the lives of human beings at the prenatal stage of development on account of their congenital conditions (eugenic abortion).

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Contrary to the Constitutional Tribunal’s unequivocal line of case law, the candidate announced that Article 38 of the Polish Constitution, which provides for the protection of human life, “omits legal protection of the prenatal period.”

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Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram also declared that she allows for non-compliance with a potential ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, should it find unconstitutional the regulation of the Minister of Digital Affairs of May 22 enabling the transcription of foreign same-sex unions into Polish marriage records.

Public hearing of the candidates in the Sejm

On Tuesday, July 14, 2026, a public hearing of the candidates for the office of Commissioner for Human Rights was held in the Sejm, under the patronage of the Speakers of the Sejm and the Senate and with the participation of the chairman of the Sejm’s Justice and Human Rights Committee. The candidates were Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, nominated by deputies of the Civic Coalition and the Left (Sejm paper no. 2735), and Adam Borowski, nominated by deputies of Law and Justice (Sejm paper no. 2734). A full recording of the event, which lasted more than seven hours in total, is available on the Sejm’s website. Representatives of several dozen non-governmental organizations took part in the hearing, including a representative of the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture Foundation – attorney Nikodem Bernaciak.

The Ordo Iuris representative asked both candidates two questions (19:09:15–19:11:06):

  1. “Will you stand guard over human and civil freedoms and rights also at the prenatal stage of development – I mean here children conceived but not yet born? On this point we have a uniform line of case law of the Constitutional Tribunal. These are, above all, the ruling of May 28, 1997 (case K 26/96), and the judgment of October 22, 2020 (case K 1/20), in which the Tribunal held that “human life is subject to legal protection, including in the prenatal phase, and the legal subjectivity of the child is inextricably linked to the dignity vested in it. It is therefore possible for one of the conflicting constitutional goods to lie on the side of the child in the period of life before birth.” With reference to this line of the Constitutional Tribunal’s case law, will you stand guard over human freedoms and rights also at the prenatal stage of development?
  2. Will you stand guard over the freedoms and rights also of those citizens who place the provisions of the Polish Constitution above the provisions of primary European Union law as interpreted by the EU Court of Justice? For example, in just two weeks, on July 28, the Constitutional Tribunal is due to deliberate on the incompatibility with the Polish Constitution of the regulation of the Ministry of Digital Affairs which – following the Luxembourg court – makes it possible to enter two persons of the same sex in a marriage record (case U 2/26). Assuming that the Tribunal rules those provisions unconstitutional, and a superior nevertheless orders a subordinate to comply with them, and the subordinate refuses – will you stand guard over the freedoms and rights of the citizens who, in such a situation, choose fidelity to the provisions of the Polish Constitution?”

European court rulings above Poland’s Constitution

The candidate nominated by Law and Justice did not address these questions directly, whereas the candidate of the governing coalition (who, given the arithmetic of the Sejm, has the greatest chance of assuming the office of Commissioner), referring to the questions concerning the protection of conceived life, announced that “as for the assessment of the ruling of October 22, 2020, it has, after all, already been assessed by the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of M.L. v. Poland [judgment of December 14, 2023] and A.R. v. Poland [judgment of November 13, 2025]. […] And that binds the Commissioner” (broadcast excerpt, 18:35:49–18:36:34), and also that “when we trace the discussion in the National Assembly and the referendum campaign that preceded the adoption of the Constitution, there is no doubt that, among the drafters, deliberately and intentionally, this provision [Article 38 of the Polish Constitution] omits legal protection of the prenatal period. […] In my view, we can have a debate – though it is already a very technical legal debate – as to whether the 1997 ruling has the character of a derogating judgment or not. But I believe that it assessed, above all, the social ground for the admissibility of terminating a pregnancy, and that was the essence of that ruling. The Commissioner is bound by all judgments of the European Court of Human Rights” (broadcast excerpt, 19:31:18–19:32:31).

As regards the imposition on Poland by the CJEU (and, on the employees of civil registry offices, by the government) of the transcription of same-sex unions, the candidate of the left-wing parties forming Donald Tusk’s government stated: “As for the question concerning the review by the Constitutional Tribunal of whether the regulation of May 22, intended to implement the judgments in Formela v. Poland [of September 19, 2024] and Przybyszewska v. Poland [of December 12, 2023] – of course this binds us, and public authorities should comply. If such a ruling is handed down, then – if I have the opportunity – I will of course look into the composition of the panel in which it was issued, but my opinion of the Constitutional Tribunal is also well known. Nor can it be that it serves as a kind of skeleton key for eliminating inconvenient rulings of the European courts, because that, after all, was the subject of the European Commission’s complaint, and those proceedings concluded on December 18, 2025 [with the judgment in case C-448/23]” (broadcast excerpt, 19:33:14–19:34:33).

Ordo Iuris opinions and the ECtHR’s ideological activism

In all four sets of proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights cited by the candidate for Commissioner for Human Rights, the Ordo Iuris Institute submitted an amicus curiae opinion, pointing to the incompatibility with the Polish Constitution of any regulations permitting either eugenic abortion or the institutionalization of same-sex unions – these were the brief in Przybyszewska v. Poland (December 12, 2023), the brief in M.L. v. Poland (December 14, 2023), the brief in Formela v. Poland (September 19, 2024), and the brief in A.R. v. Poland (November 13, 2025). Despite this, in each of these cases the ECtHR judges displayed ideological activism, imposing on Poland outcomes contrary not only to the Constitution but also to the order of natural law. The problem is not the original wording of the European Convention on Human Rights itself, but precisely its ideological interpretation by today’s ideologues in robes. That is why the president of Ordo Iuris signaled as early as 2024 that “many arguments speak in favor of radically limiting the Convention’s influence on Poland. Its interpretation, carried out for years as a ‘living treaty’ interpretation, departs entirely from the original meaning of human rights. New ‘sensitivities’ are becoming more important than fundamental ‘rights.’”

A continuation of the candidate’s earlier statements

Answering the questions on abortion in the Sejm, Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram made it clear that, as Commissioner for Human Rights, she would most likely fully maintain the view she expressed nearly six years ago, in an interview of October 23, 2020, on the TVN24 network. She stated in it that “persons who are not judges took part in issuing this decision,” and therefore “this judgment is invalid,” and that Polish mothers who wish to take the lives of their children may “make use of the so-called abortion underground.” The current position of the candidate for Commissioner regarding the alleged supremacy of the European Convention on Human Rights over the Polish Constitution is likewise a continuation of her previous statements. Nearly five years ago, in an interview of November 24, 2021, on TVN24, she said that the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgment of that day, holding that the ECtHR has no competence to assess the legality of the election of Constitutional Tribunal judges (case K 6/21), was “a milestone on the road to Russia.”

Concerns for defenders of freedom of conscience

In practice, there is thus a justified doubt as to whether, for example, members of the medical professions who refuse to submit to the abortion “guidelines” of Donald Tusk’s government will find support in the actions of the next Commissioner for Human Rights. The Ordo Iuris Institute will once again – as during Adam Bodnar’s tenure – have to partially “take over” the Commissioner’s function in this area, which is in fact already happening: in December 2025, the Ordo Iuris Institute published, for example, a guide for healthcare providers, including hospitals, on how to make use of the institutional conscience clause, and it has publicized cases of violations of midwives’ right to conscientious objection in the context of the abortion “guidelines”. Nor can there be any certainty that the candidate for Commissioner would stand up for the employees of institutions such as the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) and the National Health Fund (NFZ) – and potentially also for employers – who would wish to refuse to register a same-sex partner as a purported “family member” for health insurance purposes. In this context, the Ordo Iuris Institute also recently revealed that the government is already exerting pressure on the consciences of nearly 50,000 employees of ZUS, the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund (KRUS), the Pension Board of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (ZER MSWiA), the Military Pension Office, and the Pension Office of the Prison Service, imposing on them the obligation to recognize transcriptions of same-sex unions contracted abroad despite their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of the Polish legal order.

“If, for the candidate for the office of the new Commissioner for Human Rights, the judgments of European courts are more important than the provisions of the Polish Constitution, then there is a justified concern as to whether she will truly stand guard over the freedoms and rights also of those citizens who choose fidelity to constitutional values, such as the defense of conceived life or the natural identity of marriage as a union of a woman and a man,” says Bernaciak, a senior analyst at the Ordo Iuris Institute.

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Source of cover photo: iStock