Adam Bodnar

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Adam Bodnar (2017)

Adam Piotr Bodnar (born January 6, 1977 in Trzebiatów ) is a Polish constitutional lawyer and human rights activist . Since September 9, 2015, he has been the Polish Commissioner for Civil Rights . According to a decision by the Constitutional Court on April 15, 2021, Bodnar must resign from this office within three months.

Education and academic career

Bodnar studied at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw , where he graduated in 2000. He then obtained a Master of Laws in Comparative Constitutional Law at the Central European University in Budapest. From 2001 to 2004 Bodnar worked as a lawyer in the major law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges . In 2006, he became at Mirosław Wyrzykowski with a thesis on "multiple citizenship in the European Constitution sphere" doctorate . He then worked as a lecturer at the Department of Human Rights at the University of Warsaw, published scholarly publications on questions of constitutional law and gave lectures at the Academy of European Law in Trier, the Warsaw Institute for Public Affairs and the Committee on Law and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe . In 2011 Bodnar was awarded the Tolerance Prize of the Polish LGBT Organizations.

Work for non-governmental organizations

From 2012 to 2014 Bodnar was a deputy member of the Advisory Council of the European Institute for Gender Equality and 2013 Marshall Memorial Fellow of the German Marshall Fund . Bodnar has been on the Board of Directors of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture since December 2013 . In 2014/15 he worked (most recently as Vice President) for the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation . There he reported on the human rights situation in Poland for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and supported the work of other non-governmental organizations such as the Stephan Báthory Foundation , the Panoptykon Foundation against surveillance and the Polish branch of the environmental protection organization ClientEarth . He co-edited the online newspaper Kultura Liberalna .

Civil Rights Officer

Bodnar was proposed in mid-2015 by the Social Democratic Federation of the Democratic Left for the office of civil rights commissioner and supported by the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (PO), which was interpreted as an attempt by the PO in the election campaign before the 2015 Sejm election , after the lost presidential election in May and bad Integrate poll numbers against the national conservative law and justice (PiS) left.

The PiS nominated the former Solidarność activist Zofia Romaszewska as the opposing candidate . After he was elected by the Sejm , the lower chamber of the Polish parliament, on July 22, 2015 with 239 votes to 155, he was confirmed by the Senate on August 7, 2015 with 41 votes to 39 and two abstentions, which was previously because of Bodnar's left-wing liberalism Positions - he advocates a registered partnership of homosexuals and describes himself as an atheist in Catholic Poland - was not taken for granted; several PO MPs refused to approve him in the respective votes.

Bodnar took up his post as the seventh commissioner for civil rights when he was sworn in on September 9, 2015 as the successor to Irena Lipowicz . As his first focus of work, he announced improvements in the accessibility of the judiciary, for the homeless and for refugees and, unlike the newly elected Polish President Andrzej Duda , called on this urgent question to participate in a solidarity-based common refugee policy of the European Union . He also praised the work of the non-governmental organizations and declared that he wanted to work with them, but not to make himself “hostage” to them.

Bodnar lodged complaints in 2015 and 2016 against the controversial judicial reforms of the government of the right-wing conservative PiS, which took office at the end of 2015. In 2018 he was awarded the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for his work in the Polish constitutional conflict. He and his office were awarded the Roland Berger Prize for Human Dignity in 2019 . Bodnar declared that he would not accept the award because the role of the father of the award sponsor in the Nazi regime has not been clarified.

Bodnar's term of office expired in September 2020. The majority of the PiS occupied first chamber of parliament, the Sejm, and the second chamber dominated by the opposition, the Senate, could not agree on a successor for months, so Bodnar remained in office. On April 15, 2021, the Constitutional Court ruled that Bodnar must cease operations within the next three months.

Fonts

  • Edited with Michał Kowalski, Karen Raible, Frank Schorkopf : The Emerging Constitutional Law of the European Union. German and Polish Perspectives (= contributions to foreign public law and international law. Volume 163). Springer, Berlin et al. 2003.
  • with Stanisław Frankowski: Introduction to Polish Law. Kluwer, The Hague 2005.
  • Obywatelstvo wielopoziomowe. Status jednostki w europejskiej przestrzeni konstytucyjnej. Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, Warsaw 2008 (dissertation).

Web links

Commons : Adam Bodnar  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d Bodnar złożył ślubowanie. Priorytety: sądy, bezdomni, uchodźcy. In: TVN24 , September 9, 2015 (Polish).
  2. ↑ Brief introduction to the Commissioner for Civil Rights.
  3. ↑ GMF Alumni on the Move. In: GMFUS.org , September 8, 2015 (English).
  4. ^ UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture - Decision Making. In: OHCHR.org , accessed September 9, 2015.
  5. ↑ Article with reference to Bodnar at KulturaLiberalna.pl (Polish).
  6. ^ A b Florian Kellermann: Election campaign in Poland. Tusk party seeks votes. In: Deutschlandfunk , August 25, 2015.
  7. ↑ Lista kandydatów na Rzecznika Praw Obywatelskich [= list of candidates for the ombudsman]. In: Sejm.gov.pl , printed matter no.3535 , July 23, 2015 (Polish, PDF) .
  8. ↑ a b Lars Leschewitz: Sejm determines Adam Bodnar as commissioner for human rights. In: Poland today , July 24, 2015.
  9. ^ New Human Rights Defender. In: RPO.gov.pl , August 7, 2015 (English).
  10. ↑ The 2018 Rafto Prize to Adam Bodnar. In: NHH.no (English).
  11. ↑ The award of the Human Dignity Prize is postponed. In: Deutschlandfunk , October 19, 2019.
  12. ↑ Poland's right-wing national government serves last official critic from , Kurier, April 15, 2021.
personal data
SURNAME Bodnar, Adam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bodnar, Adam Piotr (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish legal scholar and human rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Trzebiatów