Page 148 - Секретаријат за законодавство

government have the authority to enact measures which would have the
force of a law (excluding regulations which have the force of statute law
issued by the president during martial law). The powers of the executive
with regard to the possibility of issuing secondary legislation are laid
down in Art. 92(2) of the constitution, which provides that:

Regulations shall be issued on the basis of speciÞc authorization con-
tained in, and for the purpose of implementation of, laws by the organs
speciÞed in the Constitution. The authorization shall specify the organ
appropriate to issue a regulation and the scope of matters to be regu-
lated as well as instructions concerning the provisions of such an act.

It follows from the above that in a number of cases implementing a di-
rective into the Polish legal order is not possible without amending the
relevant law. This translates into the necessity for most directives to initi-
ate the legislative process involving Parliament. Exceptions include situa-
tions where a law contains a clause authorising to issue a regulation which
covers precisely the subject matter of the directive or where the directive
contains provisions of a purely technical nature and does not provide for
any rights or obligations for individuals. In such situations it is possible to
transpose the directive by way of a by-law (ministerial regulation).

There is no standard approach when it comes to the choice of instru-
ments to be used for transposition of directives. That choice is made
on a case-by-case basis, depending on the subject matter and scope of
provisions to be transposed into Polish law.

Since 2004, Poland has had several times recourse to a special instrument
for transposition of EU law: the so called “Horizontal law”. It consists in
introducing amendments to several laws within one single law. The pur-
pose is to ensure timely and accurate implementation of a number of EU
acts or individual provisions of EU law. Due to its exceptional character,
this instrument may cover exclusively measures implementing EU law
or eliminating incompatibilities with EU law and must address issues
which are urgent, similar in its legal nature and non-controversial.
An example of such an instrument is the Law of 23 June 2006 amend-
ing certain laws in relations to membership of Poland in the Europe-
44
an Union . The amendments primarily consist in inserting into several

44 Dz.U. z 2006 r. Nr 133, poz. 935.

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