States of emergencies in the French and Polish constitutions

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to compare the regulation of emergencies in the Poland’s constitution of 1997 with the France’s basic law provisions on this score. The Constitution of the Republic of Poland has a special Chapter XI entitled “Extraordinary Measures”, while the French basic law of 1958 is dealing with this subject matter in the articles 16 and 36. The Polish constitutional regulation in the mentioned chapter is incomplete in the sense that the other related provisions such as the martial law, the general or partial mobilization are outside of it. The really applied French rules have the legislative basis. As a result of this founding, the author came to the conclusions that both regulations are strongly depending on their past political and constitutional experiences, which causes that at present the articles 16 and 36 of the French Constitution are of little importance. Both are subject of continual propositions of reform. With the exception of the 2008 revision of the art. 16, all these projects failed. In Poland, on the contrary, despite the flaws perceived, there are no suggestions of improvement of the three states of emergencies provided for in Chapter XI of the basic law. The first best way of reform should be the removing or at least the legislative downgrading of the unpractical state of natural disaster.