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Article 44 § 5 excludes forfeiture where the items are subject to return to the injured party or another entitled entity — in this case, the injured parties would be the victims or their heirs, not the State Treasury.
In proceedings, these measures are secured ex officio pursuant to Article 291 § 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure where there are justified grounds to fear that, without such security, the enforcement of the judgment would be impossible or substantially impeded.
For the reader of this account, one question is of practical relevance: whether anything can still lawfully be done today against the perpetrators of the murder of Jews hidden in Firlej. The answer that follows from the set of facts is negative — the case was already tried on 2 May 1944 by the Special Court in Łódź, operating in the Wartheland, which sentenced Ewa and Marek Janicki to death and Karol Janicki to two years in a penal camp. The legal issue in this material does not consist in assessing the act against contemporary norms, but in the fact that the judgment was rendered under the occupier's law, while the sources provided consist exclusively of provisions of contemporary Polish criminal and criminal procedure law. The measures described in the sources — forfeiture of property under Article 44 of the Criminal Code, securing the enforcement of a judgment under Article 291 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, or the interception of communications under Article 237 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — are tools of proceedings conducted today before the authorities of the Republic of Poland. The act of July 1943 and the judgment of 1944 do not fall within any of these procedures, because criminal proceedings require an act to be assessed under the provisions in force at the time it was committed.
If, however, one were to model this situation under the supplied norms, the decisive factor would be the property consequence — the fate of the valuables extorted from the Brajtbarts. Article 44 § 1 of the Criminal Code requires the court to order the forfeiture of items derived directly from the offence, while Article 44 § 2 permits the forfeiture of items that served or were intended to commit it. Article 44 § 7 provides that where the items do not belong to the perpetrator, forfeiture may be ordered only in cases provided for by statute, and in the case of co-ownership, the forfeiture extends to the perpetrator's share or its equivalent value. Article 237 § 3a of the Code of Criminal Procedure further permits the interception of telephone conversations also for the purpose of revealing property threatened with forfeiture within the meaning of Article 45 § 2 of the Criminal Code. None of these solutions contains a rule on accounting for plunder committed more than eighty years ago, or on the rehabilitation of judgments of German occupation courts.
Realistically, the Firlej case will remain a matter of historical research, as it has been to date in the archival inquiry into the records of the Special Court in Łódź conducted by the Łódź branch of the Institute of National Remembrance. For the descendants of the victims, the factual findings carry practical significance: the record of Moszek Brajtbart's testimony, the judgment of 2 May 1944, and the photographs and documents from the case file. For the researcher and the journalist, the uncertain fate of Moszek and his nephew Mordka is also significant, as the sources do not resolve their subsequent fate. Material redress for this crime is not covered by any of the procedures described in the supplied provisions, and no judgment issued today in this matter should be expected.
Did the General Assembly of the Constitutional Tribunal convened on 3 November 2026, after the suspension of the President and Vice-President of the Tribunal, have a quorum to adopt resolutions, given that the quorum is calculated from the total number of judges, while some judges were excluded from the proceedings or boycotted the session.
Under the Act on the Organisation and Proceedings before the Constitutional Tribunal (consolidated text of 2019), resolutions of the General Assembly are adopted by an absolute majority of votes in the presence of at least two-thirds of the total number of judges of the Tribunal, unless the statute provides otherwise. The norm contained in this provision is therefore a requirement to calculate the quorum from the total (statutory) number of judges, not from the number of judges actually admitted to the proceedings — which means that reducing the basis for calculating the quorum to 12 judges (by excluding the suspended President, the Vice-President, and the substitute judge Wyrembak) has no direct basis in the wording of this provision and constitutes an extensive interpretation, based on the general principle that a judge deprived of the ability to perform acts does not sit in collegiate panels. It is worth emphasising that the provision contains the exception "unless the statute provides otherwise," which offers argumentative ground to both sides of the dispute.
The materials provided contain no case law resolving this specific quorum issue in circumstances of an internal dispute over the legitimacy of the Tribunal's judges, so no uniform line of case law can be identified; the status of the "substitute judges" themselves and of the judges elected in 2023 remains a matter of dispute which the Tribunal, in this composition, cannot itself resolve without risking an accusation of circularity.
The report imprecisely states that "the act on the functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal says that two-thirds of judges must take part in the deliberations," thereby transferring the quorum requirement from resolutions of the General Assembly to "deliberations" in general and omitting the clause "unless the statute provides otherwise." It would be more accurate to write that, under the Act on the Organisation and Proceedings before the Constitutional Tribunal, resolutions of the General Assembly require the presence of at least two-thirds of the total number of judges of the Tribunal, unless the statute provides otherwise — and thus the dispute over the quorum in the matter of 3 November 2026 concerns what constitutes the "total number of judges": whether it is 15 (including the suspended judges and the substitute) or 12. The article also suggests that rejection of the quorum calculated from 15 judges was self-evident, whereas this is a contested interpretation which the wording of the provision itself does not settle.
The resolutions of the General Assembly of 3 November 2026 — including the Tribunal's 2027 budget of PLN 75,450,000 — are exposed to allegations of defectiveness owing to the contested method of calculating the quorum, and this may be raised by PiS both during the consideration of the budget amendment in the Public Finance Committee and in any potential proceedings before an administrative court, or in a future constitutional "reset." A practitioner assessing the validity of the Assembly's decisions should analyse the matter along two tracks: on the one hand, the argument that a suspended President cannot block the acts of the Assembly and that Article 130 § 1 of the Law on the Organisation of Ordinary Courts provides a basis for suspension (which strengthens the position of judges Korwin-Piotrowska and the "new" judges); on the other, that reducing the quorum basis by judges deemed "irregularly appointed" without a court judgment is the weaker link in the legal construction, and it is precisely there that the point of attack against the adopted resolutions should be sought.
The issue is the legal classification of the benefit described in the message — namely, whether the amount of PLN 100 and the rules governing its award relate to the PFRON allowance under Area E of the "Active Local Government" ("Aktywny samorząd") programme (compensation for the cost of energy consumed by medical equipment), or to a separate benefit under the family benefits system, and what the actual conditions and deadlines are for applying for the PFRON allowance.
The source provided — Article 14(2) of the Act on Family Benefits (consolidated text announced by the Marshal of the Sejm on 1 September 2026) — provides that the allowance is granted once a year, in connection with the start of the school year or of annual pre-school preparation, in the amount of PLN 100.00 per child. This is the so-called school allowance, a benefit under the family support system, not a PFRON benefit. The "Active Local Government" programme, including the allowance to cover the cost of electricity consumed by a respirator or oxygen concentrator (Area E), is governed separately — by a Resolution of the Council of Ministers on the long-term "Active Local Government" programme — and has no legal basis in the Act on Family Benefits.
Since the database lacks the provision establishing the "Active Local Government" programme, I rely here on the general principle that the conditions for awarding the PFRON allowance (amount, period covered by the refund, deadlines) derive exclusively from the programme's regulations and PFRON announcements, and not from the provisions on family benefits.
The flagged "contradiction with the source" is in fact apparent and requires correction in both directions. First, the cited Article 14(2) of the Act on Family Benefits does not regulate the PFRON allowance at all — it concerns the school allowance of PLN 100 per child, paid once a year; consequently, it can neither confirm nor refute the rate of PLN 100 per month under the "Active Local Government" programme. Comparing these two benefits is a systemic error, not a factual correction.
Second, the article's claim of PLN 100 per month, with a range of PLN 300–600 for 3–6 months, remains unverified by any provision in the database — the precise wording should be: "according to a PFRON announcement, the allowance under Area E is set at PLN 100 for each month of equipment use, with a single application covering 3 to 6 months (PLN 300–600 in total), which follows from the regulations of the 'Active Local Government' programme and not from the Act." The publication should also clearly distinguish the PFRON allowance from the school allowance, so as not to mislead readers as to the legal basis of the benefit.
The practical burden lies on the deadline and the manner of application: applications for the allowance under Area E must be submitted electronically in the Support Handling System (SOW) by 30 November 2026, and the application may specify only months that have already elapsed and fall within the 180-day qualifying period preceding submission — meaning that delaying the application genuinely reduces the pool of months eligible for refund. The stronger argument for the applicant: PFRON itself has abolished the three previous evidentiary barriers — there is no need to be the payer of the energy bill, no need to collect invoices, and no need to wait for a contract to be concluded — so a refusal to accept an application on the ground of missing bills would be inconsistent with the programme's current rules. Risk to avoid: citing the Act on Family Benefits as the legal basis for the PFRON allowance in submissions or publications — these are two separate legal systems, and such a basis will not withstand scrutiny either before PFRON or in any appeal against a refusal decision.
Can the Minister of Agriculture, without amending the Act of 22 May 2009 on promotional funds for agri-food products, strengthen the transparency of the expenditure of farmers' contributions, in particular by abolishing the PLN 150,000 threshold exempting projects from the competitive procedure and by introducing a prohibition of conflicts of interest for persons managing the funds.
Legal basis: The database contains no direct source, so I rely on a general principle of law arising from the structure of that Act: the level of regulation is two-tiered — the statute defines the obligation to make contributions and the tasks of the funds, whereas the detailed rules for allocating and spending the funds are laid down in regulations issued by the Minister of Agriculture and in internal acts (orders of the Director General of KOWR). Minister Krajewski has announced measures precisely within this framework: first, amendments to the regulations and KOWR orders, with a statutory amendment only as a possible later step. This means that abolishing the PLN 150,000 threshold and the criteria for selecting contractors fall within executive competence, provided they do not exceed the limits set by the statutory delegation; however, a genuinely effective prohibition of conflicts of interest for members of the managing boards may require a statutory basis, if it concerns the status of those bodies rather than merely the procedure for selecting contractors.
What case law says: I have no case law material on promotional funds and therefore do not resolve this issue; the regulator's approach here is nonetheless analogous to other systems of sequestered industry levies — the spending of funds entrusted to entities outside public administration is, as a rule, subject to competitive procedures, and deviations (an exempting threshold) are often treated as a source of audit risk. Similarly, the PLN 150,000 threshold echoes the threshold under the Public Procurement Law (currently PLN 130,000 for services), which shows that since 2017 the promotional funds have operated under a regime more lenient than the public-sector standard.
Practical significance: The practical effect of the announcements is twofold. First, existing contractors for projects below PLN 150,000 who obtained commissions without a competitive tender (often from entities on whose boards they themselves sit) must reckon with losing their existing funding channel as soon as the regulations are amended — that is, not necessarily only in Q1 2027, when the Minister plans to assess the results; the meeting with the boards scheduled for 20 November this year marks the point at which comments on the draft acts should be submitted. Second, the boards of industry chambers and organisations implementing projects should already now document their results (reach, cost per person reached), because the announced "hard criterion of price and reach" will become the basis for settlement, and the publication of tenders in a single, publicly announced place will eliminate the practice of publishing them solely on organisations' own websites. The legal risk centres on whether a prohibition of conflicts of interest introduced by regulation alone will be effective against members of boards established under the statute — in the event of a dispute over the validity of contracts concluded with an entity affiliated with a board, the argument of breach of the competitive procedure will become stronger, but a punitive prohibition directed at members of a fund's organ may require a statutory amendment.
Article 49(1) of the Road Traffic Law prohibits stopping a vehicle at an intersection and within a distance of less than 10 m from a level crossing or intersection, as well as within less than 10 m in front of a road sign or traffic signal if the vehicle would obscure it.
The definitions in Article 2 of the Road Traffic Law determine what constitutes a stop (up to 1 minute) and what constitutes parking (longer than 1 minute) — a "kiss and ride" lasting longer than a minute already constitutes parking and is subject to the full prohibitions of Article 49.
Parents who drop their children off right at the school door act on the belief that they are enhancing their child's safety, while their conduct remains subject to the same traffic restrictions as any other driver. The dispute over "kiss and ride" is, at its core, a dispute over the application of the Act of 20 June 1997 – the Road Traffic Law (Prawo o ruchu drogowym), in particular the provisions on stopping and parking (Articles 46–49) and on residential zones and traffic zones (Article 2(16) and (16a)). The key legal question is: where may a driver lawfully stop or park a vehicle in the vicinity of a school, and where is this expressly prohibited. The matter will be resolved on the basis of Article 49(1) of the Road Traffic Law, Article 47 of that Act, and the technical and construction regulations concerning public roads.
The scope of permissible conduct for a driver outside a school is defined by the following norms:
A driver who blocks a crossing, enters a cycle path, or stands at a bus stop risks police intervention and the consequences provided for violations of the stopping and parking prohibitions; pedestrians and cyclists gain priority in residential zones, which they can effectively enforce. For municipalities and road managers, the practical significance lies in zone design: poorly located "kiss and ride" spots near a cycle path or crossing generate a state of permanent violation of Article 49, for which drivers are liable, but which stems from the municipality's spatial decision. For parents, it is essential that the legality of dropping a child off ends where the prohibition of Article 49 begins — convenience is not a ground for departing from the rules. Traffic studies, such as the Wrocław one (12–15% of children driven to school by car), may constitute material justifying a change in traffic organization by the road manager. The further course of the matter depends on the road manager's decision on a possible change in traffic organization or the abolition of "kiss and ride" zones.