Could Poland's controversial LGBT-Free Zones finally be consigned to history?
In 2019, a wave of Polish towns and cities passed resolutions declaring themselves “LGBT-Free Zones” that at one point encompassed one-third of the country.Since then, activists and legal experts have fought to revoke or nullify these declarations, chipping away at the bloc of LGBT-Free Zones largely found in the southeastern part of the country.Significant progress has been difficult, since Poland has been facing a rule-of-law crisis going back to at least 2017, when the right-wing Law and Justice, or PiS party began spreading its influence on key bodies such as the Constitutional Court.The crisis in the judiciary runs so deep that the EU initiated Article 7 proceedings against Poland, which suspend certain rights for member states if they are deemed to persistently be in breach of the EU’s fundamental values.The European Commission launched legal proceedings against Poland at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in a case known as Commission v Poland, and the ECJ ordered Poland to suspend the laws that interfere with the independence of the judiciary.Poland ignored these rulings.Now the country’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Marcin Wiącek, has decided to tackle both the homophobic resolutions and the faltering legal system at the same time.The Office of the Ombudsman, while formally an institution financed by the government, exists in many countries as an independent one-man state body with the mandate to launch inquiries into violations of human rights perpetrated by any institution or body in the country.Even his election was marred by difficulty, with PiS blocking the opposition-backed candidate for 10 months.This week, Wiącek launched a complaint against one of the municipalities that have held onto their LGBT-Free Zone designation since 2017.Tuszów Narodowy is a small settlement in the municipality of Rzeszów known to those outside of Poland as one of the main stops along the Ukrainian refugee route from the border to Warsaw.Local authorities have refused to.
