Studia Administracyjne

The purpose of this commentary is to discuss the issues related to the Act on Access to Public Information and the Code of Administrative Procedure, as raised in the justification of the judgment of the Provincial Administrative Court in Szczecin dated January 17, 2024, with case number I SA/Sz 634/23. This ruling addresses procedural law issues to the extent that the law requires the exclusion of an employee who, as a monocratic body not being a public authority, issued the previous decision when reissuing a decision upon a request for reconsideration. It also addresses substantive issues arising from the aforementioned Act, such as the classification of public information as simple or processed information and the term "special public interest." The issues raised in the case provoke many discrepancies in administrative case law and are also significant from a constitutional perspective, as they largely pertain to important constitutional provisions, namely: Article 61 and Article 78 in conjunction with Article 2, as well as to a lesser extent Article 68 of the Constitution. It should be noted that the exclusion of an employee holding a monocratic position raised particularly many doubts before the amendment of the Code of Administrative Procedure, which came into force on April 11, 2011. In the factual state of the commented judgment, there is also the issue of choosing the appropriate appeal measure in accordance with the aforementioned Acts, as well as the ambiguous terms lacking legal definitions in administrative law, such as "special legal interest" and "simple information" and "processed information." Referring to case law and doctrine, a significant part of the ruling of the Provincial Administrative Court in Szczecin should be agreed with, but the court's argumentation when classifying public information as processed raises doubts.