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Annual Report 2007

Legal Education

The goal of the program is to improve public access to legal aid and the justice system as well as promote the rule of law. We assist organizations that offer free legal advice to citizens and provide specialized counsel to the most vulnerable or socially discriminated groups. We support initiatives that promote good and eliminate bad practices in the Polish legal system.

Public interest law

We offer grants to organizations active in the sphere of law for projects involving direct legal aid for citizens as well as for activities aimed to curtail discriminatory regulations and practices in Polish law and increase transparency and efficiency of the justice system.
In a grant competition organized in 2007, we received 79 letters of intent. 32 applicants were invited to submit full proposals; out of them a committee of experts selected 14 projects. Still very few organizations conduct professional, systematic activities that go beyond the provision of legal aid. Hence, the majority of grants awarded in this edition went for projects involving legal aid for individuals threatened with discrimination or in difficult life situation. We also provided a grant to the Legal Clinics Foundation which supports a network of 24 university legal clinics where students supervised by academics provide free legal aid for individuals who cannot afford the assistance of professional attorneys.

Citizens Advice Bureaus

Since 1999, we have supported the Citizens Advice Bureaus in which about 100 trained advisers provide each year ca. 30,000 pieces of free-of-charge information and legal counsel to individuals who cannot afford professional legal assistance in such fields as the penal law and the labor law, as well as refugee, consumer and patient rights. Bureaus act on the basis of harmonized standards of accessibility, confidentiality, professionalism and independence. Their counselors participate in a cycle of trainings run by experts.
In 2007, we made 29 core support grants to the network of Citizens Advice Bureaus.

Public scrutiny of candidates to Constitutional Tribunal

In 2006, jointly with the Polish Section of the International Commission of Jurists and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, we monitored the process of nominating candidates and ultimately appointing six Constitutional Tribunal judges. Monitoring results were discussed at a meeting to which we invited Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal judges, representatives of the State Judiciary Council, NGOs and experts (March 6, 2007). Meeting participants, among them constitutional law specialists: Prof. Marek Safjan, Prof. Wiktor Osiatyński and Prof. Andrzej Rzepliński, also considered the possibilities for monitoring the process of appointing judges to various courts and tribunals. After the meeting, we completed a report on the monitoring activities, supplemented by recommendations concerning the procedure of appointing judges to the Constitutional Tribunal. Our postulates include that judicial candidacies be submitted at least 100 days prior to the end of a judicial term. This would allow time for public debate about the candidates and verification of the candidates' formal requirements, which should result in a reliable and transparent evaluation of their qualifications.

In 2007, the program was financed by funds from the Open Society Institute, including grant from Human Rights and Governance Grants Program, OSI-Budapest.

Grants PLN 637,140.00
Monitoring PLN 13,446.69
Program implementation PLN 67,411.67
Total program costs PLN 717,998.36

Grants 2007

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