Compliance of the regulation of supervision over local government in the Polish Constitution and in legal acts

The aim of the article will be to analyze the regulation of supervision over local government in the Polish Constitution and in the legal system regulating the supervision of local government. The implementation of this objective will allow to demonstrate to what extent supervision has constitutional authority and whether the constitutional regulation is complied with in legislation. Therefore, this study will omit those issues related to supervision that do not directly arise from the Constitution. In particular, this applies to the supervisory procedure.The content of this study includes an analysis of the concept of supervision itself, supervisory criteria and supervisory authorities.The basic research method will be the dogmatic method focusing on the interpretation of constitutional norms and the presentation of the positions and views of representatives of science. The research method used will also include an analysis of selected and representative court case law and the presentation of practical examples of supervision and their assessment by administrative courts.The Polish Constitution uses the concept of supervision without defining it. It is interpreted in the same way in Polish doctrine as well as in judicial jurisprudence, emphasizing its most important element, i.e. the authoritative and unilateral interference in the activities of local government bodies by the supervisory authority. This is how it differs from control, which does not include this form of influence.The Polish Constitution defines the criterion of supervision for supervision too narrowly, as well as incompletely defines supervisory bodies. It ignores the criterion of proportionality, which limits the right to authoritative intervention in the activities of local government to cases of a material violation of the law. In addition, the legislator assigns criteria of a purposeful or efficiency nature to supervisory authorities. Many government administration bodies, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Voivodeship Superintendent of Schools, exercise supervisory powers over local governments, even though they are not supervisory bodies within the meaning of the Constitution.The incompatibility of the laws with the Constitution in terms of the criterion of supervision and the number of bodies with supervisory competences does not have a significant impact on the independence of local government.This is due to the occasional application of supervisory criteria other than legality and the generally uniform position of administrative courts, which always reduce the assessment of supervisory activities to the criterion of legality. The practice of administrative courts allows for the elimination of these differences. There is no mention of the need for an urgent change to the Polish Constitution.