Constitutional principles of the institute of environmental rights in the Polish legal system

The purpose of the publication is to present the features of the normative consolidation of environmental rights in the Polish legal system based on the systematic interpretation of the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, legislative acts and the practice of their application, taking into account the analysis of the results of scientific research by Polish environmental lawyers. Based on a systematic analysis of the provisions of the Polish Constitution, the article singles out three groups of constitutional prescriptions that are directly or indirectly related to the establishment and provision of environmental rights. The first group is those that directly establish separate environmental rights. This is Article 74 of Chapter II «Human and Citizen Freedoms, Rights and Duties» of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. At the same time, Poland belongs to those countries whose Constitutions do not enshrine the right to a safe environment. The Constitution of Poland highlights the right to environmental information and indirectly defines the right of the public to participate in environmental protection activities. The second group concerns the regulation of the duties of state bodies in the field of environmental protection, ensuring its safe condition. Despite the repeated mentions in the Polish Constitution of the duty of state authorities to ensure a safe state of the environment, the theory and jurisprudence of the neighbouring state do not consider it possible to derive the right of a person to a safe environment from this duty. The constituent norms of the first section of the Constitution can be attributed to the third group of constitutional prescriptions. These are, in particular, prescriptions that recognize the need to observe the principle of sustainable development, as well as the concept of «common good» introduced into the Polish Constitution, which found projection in the environmental legal mechanism and became the basis for the justification of the institution of «collective complaint» that can be submitted by public environmental organizations.