ATTENTION – THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC TRANSLATION from Polish
By its judgment of August 21, 2015, the Supreme Administrative Court repealed the ruling of the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw and ordered the Mazowieckie Voivode to consider the merits of an application for confirmation of Polish citizenship. The case concerned the application being left unprocessed due to the failure to provide detailed information regarding the applicant’s initials to the second degree. The court found that the lack of full personal data concerning the grandparents (including maiden names, dates and places of birth, details of their parents, marital status, and citizenship) constituted a formal deficiency within the meaning of Article 64 § 2 of the Code of Administrative Procedure, which justified the application being left unprocessed. The Supreme Administrative Court did not agree with this interpretation. The court clearly distinguished the formal deficiencies of the application from the substantive elements subject to assessment at the substantive stage. Formal deficiencies primarily include the elements indicated in Article 63 of the Code of Administrative Procedure and the basic data identifying the applicant, as defined in the Polish Citizenship Act. Detailed information regarding the preliminary data to the second degree, referred to in Article 56, paragraph 1, in conjunction with Article 13, paragraph 1, of the Act, serves to establish the factual circumstances of the case and does not constitute a condition for formally initiating proceedings.
The Supreme Administrative Court emphasized that a summons pursuant to Article 64, paragraph 2, of the Code of Administrative Procedure cannot lead to a premature substantive assessment of the application. If the applicant does not know the specific data and, despite due diligence, is unable to determine it, the authority cannot impose the requirement to leave the application unprocessed. The obligation to submit data and documents does not exempt the authority from conducting explanatory proceedings. The judgment has significant practical significance – it limits excessive formalism in cases concerning confirmation of Polish citizenship and confirms that the lack of complete data concerning ancestors, especially when it is objectively impossible to determine them, cannot prevent a party from having its application considered on the merits.
