Presidential Veto in Poland: Check-mate Instead of Check-and-balance

The constitutional position of the Polish President is a legacy of the transformation era: empowered with extraordinary prerogatives it was supposed to prevent any attempt to undermine the communist domination in a semi-democratic regime originally created as a transitional compromise between ‘Solidarity’ and communist party in 1989. Subsequent democratization formed the presidency as a paradoxical combination of strong competencies in the area of legislation with no real executive powers. In this way, an ongoing conflict between a president and a ruling party was generated, presidential veto being one of the most powerful weapons of the former (it requires 3/5 majority to be overruled and belongs to the strongest in European democracies). The paper outlines the normative rules under which veto is executed in Poland and presents preliminary results of the research on motivations underlying its use. These are threefold: political interest of the president as independent actor (not necessarily convergent with the interest of his party), political interest of the political party the president originates from, other motivations unrelated directly to political interest (e.g. personal views). The results show that president in Poland is a semi-independent actor, supporting his party mostly when costs of such action do not have a negative effect on his re-election chances. This remains coherent with the basic determinant of the presidential election, in which the winner must gain the support of a much wider electorate than this of the party that he originates from. These dependencies make the presidential veto everything but the instrument it was originally meant to be: a safeguard of the constitutional values.