Status of Protocol 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights

People, EU behave as criminal and terrorist organization. What human rights??? Which? Selective?

That is a remarkably naive view of Polish bureaucracy. If the person has such a case, then he should progress it through the Polish courts and onwards.


Polish citizens cannot lose their citizenship by law.


Quite. Someone trying to gain citizenship would be well advised to remember that a huge amount of background checks are conducted regardless if it's by descent or through naturalisation, and that owing money to the Polish state (especially for taxes/social insurance contributions) is a huge red flag.

It would appear that all of it is covered by the right to good administration. The fact that Poles all dread dealing with the bureaucrats, and that it was still legal last time I heard for them to receive "gifts" from the public for their services, rather tells the tale of how things get done in Poland. These things would get decided on a case-by-case basis, but someone who can't get his/her grandfather's passport records out of the archives would be a strong case to set a precedent. If efforts to get the present government to change the past policies don't succeed, that may happen. Rationally, PiS would benefit from nationalist Poles born abroad voting, etc. So, I don't know why they wouldn't want to fix this.

Beyond naive. If the person had a plausible case at all, they'd get on with it, file the court papers and win, in a stellar display of judicial expertise, rather than grumbling on here. It's on a par with those 'freemen on the land' people, or that guy who used to post here (remember him) who was convinced that Lech Wałęsa is still the legal president of Poland. Basically, it comes across as a rather strange delusion.


There are many factors that would disqualify someone from claiming citizenship. You really do have to have every bit of paper in order, and if anything turns up during a claim (whether by descent or naturalisation) that otherwise the state (especially the tax office etc) had previously overlooked, Pandora's Box is opened and all sorts of problems ensue, fines, bailiffs, airport issues anywhere in Schengen etc. I've actually seen this happen to someone from Canada who was claiming citizenship (by descent, as it happens).


In my opinion too. However the immigration and repatriation authorities are not mind readers - how would they know who is attracted to whom, unless there had been a conviction for something? They deal in concrete facts - the most concrete of all being a very clean record re. tax, zus, and any time spent within Poland as well (of course) the possession of full and correct documentation to back up the claim. If a document is missing, they are not bound to search sealed archives for old paperwork that may not even be there and unseal the state archive before the legal date for that just for someone's convenience.

Excessive? You have two girls who need to get a room here. Consider cleaning that up so the thread doesn't lose coherence. This is a serious topic and not about what someone thinks the law was in the U.K. at one time.

The example you quoted (Polanski) did of course have proven citizenship already. had he been trying to assert citizenship without prior records or confirmation, and going through it by descent, he'd have had the same problem as the Canadian lady I knew (in her case minor and a fiscal issue rather than a crime against the person).

Another friend (from elsewhere in continental Europe) had a slightly different problem. One of his parents had been stripped of citizenship (for leaving the country and not returning within the agreed timescale - he'd settled in Germany). He couldn't get citizenship on that basis since citizenship had been revoked. He had to become a citizen via a different route.


The issue is the law in today's Poland. It's very strict regarding citizenship, as the two examples above show.

It is a very serious topic, which is why applicants are checked against a wide variety of databases to make sure that they have no unpaid liabilities in Poland.

I know of one case where someone attempted to claim Polish citizenship through their deceased father. It transpired after a detailed background check that he had huge liabilities to the Urząd Skarbowy and ZUS, based on the fact that he had inherited the debts after the father passed away. Recognition of citizenship was refused until the debts were cleared.

Deprivation of human rights is a serious matter. A shame to read all of the irrelevant ramblings, speculation, and gossip in the middle of the thread by the silly suds.


A citizenship petition causes Polish authorities to dig up old tax claims, but not the passport records from the archives? Sounds like discrimination to me.

Old passport records do not prove how long citizenship was valid or if the holder did something to renounce their citizenship (like serve in a foreign army IIRC)

This is key to it. That or the person's citizenship being stripped for staying out of the country against the terms of their permitted travel abroad. No amount of old passport applications, whether buried in archives or not, can ameliorate that situation.

A passport proves citizenship. IF the bearer did something to become stateless is something that the government must prove. Presuming that a person lost his citizenship without any evidence to support that, is discrimination. The issue is not how long someone was absent, but if he had the right of return. Funny that someone who didn't become a citizen by descent claims to be an expert on the topic based on so much gossip.

A passport proves citizenship at the time it was issued. If an emigrant from Poland did something that would renounced said citizenship in favor of another (like serving in the armed forces of another country, there are other things to) then that won't necessarily be on file with the original passport.

Also, where are your parents in this? IIRC citizenship has to be proved from the parents not grandparents. A person who expects the Polish bureaucracy (rather than evidence from their own parents) will tend ot set off alarm bells .

Regardless of whether or not that were to be true (hint: it isn't), if a person wants to pass his/her citizenship on to his/her child, he/she must prove that he/she has citizenship to pass on. And if a person wants to claim citizenship on the basis that his/her parent had that citizenship, he/she must prove that that parent had citizenship to pass on. In your case you can't prove that your ancestor had citizenship to pass on to the next generation of your ancestors, therefore you have no claim to citizenship.


Not really, no. It confirms that on the date it was issued the issuing country was not aware of any grounds on which to refuse to issue it; it does not prove that there were no grounds on which it should not have been issued, for example the holder may have failed to advise the issuing country that he had served in the armed forces of another nation or that he had taken citizenship from another nation.

No


Also no.


And a third resounding no.

Don't give up your day job.

Plus, people who were granted permission to travel abroad and didn't return before the expiry date for that permission were sometimes stripped of citizenship. Those who also didn't return for military service or reservist obligations as well almost always lost it.

I know several Poles born and brought up in Poland who returned and now live there on the basis of citizenship of another EU member state for this reason. They no longer have Polish citizenship due to the circumstances under which they originally left Poland.

Wow! We have the whole Limey Lounge here commenting. Not a single one of them obtained Polish citizenship by descent, and there isn't a single law degree between them. They must be very concerned about a small percentage of the 20 million ethnic Poles living abroad returning to Poland. It would affect them, and the Poles owning the businesses that employ them, economically, so the emotional response is easily explained. Disregard all of their wrong opinions. Law gets decided by judges, not Internet "experts".

This, legal eagle, is what we've been telling you all along.

Which is why we're wondering why you've spent 20 years on this case, Croissant, rather than simply going to court to get access to the documents that you want to gain access to.

The fact of the matter is that Poland clearly regards you as an alien, and unless you can prove otherwise, you will remain one.

This seems to be a very particular theme with this discussion about citizenship or lack of it - and that theme seems to be unfocussed talk rather than action (and hard to say what the OP wishes to achieve with that, not that the word achieve seems to figure much with him). Basically a lot of inchoate commentary about citizenship law, a matter that is very precise. It is so so similar to the posts from that guy with several usernames who swore blind that Lech Wałęsa is still president and that Ukraine isn't a country (the entire population of Poland would disagree with the first, and the United Nations with the second).


I very much doubt you know what people's degrees are in. Not that every practising lawyer has a law degree or everyone with some sort of degree in law is or could be a lawyer.

It would be good to be kept informed about the progress of the European case he seems to be implying he can make against Poland. Though I suspect he won't.

A couple of us have obtained citizenships by descent (more than one in my case) and we all either have or will soon have Polish citizenship via the way which is open to everybody who lives in Poland for long enough and keeps one's nose clean, pays one's taxes, etc.


Good to see you're finally grasping that point. Judges do make the decisions here and they make their decisions based on evidence. If one has no evidence, they don't make the decision one wants them to. In your case there's no evidence that an ancestor of yours had Polish citizenship to pass on to another ancestor of yours, so no judge is going to rule that that ancestor did pass Polish citizenship on to another ancestor of yours.

I really don't understand why you don't just live here and naturalise as a Polish citizen. All you need to do is the bare minimum (i.e. live here legally, avoid getting a criminal record and pay all your taxes) for a few years and then fill in some forms.

So now you agree it's not a right.

Exactly, a simple matter, and the OP did say he'd lived there for some years. Sounds like we aren't getting the full story here.


So now? The government has always been able to do this - during the Second Republic and the PRL it happened often. Now it doesn't...

Looks like you misunderstand how the law and the concept of citizenship work.

The OP didn't say anything. Everything is in writing above, and it wasn't the OP who had lived in Poland for decades and who has a child who still isn't recognized as a Polish citizen. More distortion, which is plainly not caused by dyslexia. Just more prattling on from the prats.

The Second Republic stripped only Jews living in German of their citizenship in 1938 fearing a coming war and distrustful of spies. (Apparently, that was later reversed.) It didn't happen often and the Second Republic recognized more people as Polish citizens, including those living abroad, than the Third Republic. That is the heart of the problem.

Just living in Poland does not make one a Polish citizen. I know people who have never left Poland in their entire lives but are not Polish citizens.


Just having a child in Poland does not make that child Polish. I know of a child who was born in Poland to two parents who have never left Poland and is not a Polish citizen.


The heart of this problem is somebody who has, at best, a grandparent who may or may not have at sometime been a Polish citizen and may or may not have been able to pass that citizenship on. That somebody is, for reasons that are unclear, unwilling (or possibly unable) to simply live in Poland for the time required to naturalise as a Polish citizen. If all he wants is a Polish passport which will enable him to live and work elsewhere in the EU, he's not the kind of person Poland needs as a citizen anyway.

So, the OP feels that they have an ancestor that might have been recognised by the Second Republic as a citizen, but that ancestor has no claim in the Third Republic.

That has precious little to do with current Polish nationality laws, though if they have any claim to being part of the Polish Nation, they can apply for permanent residency.

It seems to me as if the OP should take a case to the Polish courts rather than posting endlessly about an unsubstantiated claim to Polish citizenship.

Absolutely. What does he expect anyone here to do? FedEx him a hanky?

It would help if he outlined his claim, as it seems that his claim hinges on a grandfather that was never a documented citizen of the II RP.

As has been said many times on PF, Polish citizenship requires documented evidence. It seems that the OP is struggling with this basic fact.

Yes, that is the heart of the problem. Was the citizenship of the citizens of the Second Republic a right, or something less than could be taken away from them involuntarily? If it was a right, then the whole Yalta border change couldn't (under present E.U. human rights law) deprive those in the East of it either, which gets even more interesting, although those people would then likely lose their present citizenship.

It was something that could be lost, according to all the laws in force during the II RP. It was not a right as it is today.


Nope, the border change was codified in Polish citizenship law before any of the European treaties came into effect.

And again, you are mentioning the European Union, although the European Union has nothing to do with individual citizenship laws. There is a general acceptance that people cannot be made stateless, but apart from that, the EU leaves citizenship to the Member States.

None of this has anything to do with the issue, which is that you cannot prove your claim to citizenship. Try Ukraine instead.

What does he expect anyone here to do?

The OP didn't ask anyone for anything. (It's sexist too assume its a male.) S/He did note that the girls here need to get a room and take the private chat there. Nothing like a fruit loop writing odes to her breakfast here in the middle of a serious discussion about human rights law.