Between Necessity and Constitutionality. Evaluating Covid-Related Legislation in Poland

The pandemic encourages authoritarian arrangements that restrict basic rights. The Constitution of Poland allows for restricting the rights of the individual, both in normal times, when such restrictions come as ordinary constitutional measures, and, where these measures fail, also in state of emergency. The COVID-19 legislation provides an example of constitutional circumvention: while no state of natural disaster was actually imposed, the legal arrangements were being introduced which could only be acceptable under such state. The authorities introduced a peculiar state of pandemic which served as a vehicle to push for changes that otherwise would, probably, have not been adopted so easily and so effectively.