„The Ministry of Foreign affairs is considering the appointment of a compulsory administrator for the Open Dialog Foundation” Newsweek communicated on the 21st August, relying on information from the Ministry’s press office. Bartosz Kramek, Head of the Foundation Board called the Ministry’s response to ODF’s statement on PiS’s attack against free courts an unprecedented attack against civil society.
Bartosz Kramek informed the PAP that officially the Foundation has not received any information on that – no letter was received either from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the court. In turn, the most recent letter from the Foundation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has remained unanswered.
„The cause for the dispute is the post which Kramek published on Facebook during the July protests. He wrote there on how to “stop PiS’s attack on the rule of law in Poland”, and entitled the whole article „Let the state stop: let us deactivate the government!”. The MSZ treated the post exceptionally seriously and, as the supervising authority, requested explanations of, inter alia, why on the Facebook profile of the Foundation “information is placed to urge illegal activities, such as encouraging people not to fulfil their obligation to pay taxes or personal attacks aimed against specific persons”. In response Bartosz Kramek emphasized that the Foundation had never called for illegal actions”, we read on Newsweek site.
In accordance with the Act on Foundations, if the activities of the foundation’s management board breach the law or statutory provisions, the minister may set a time for repairing these omissions in the management board’s activities or may demand that the foundation’s management board be changed within a set time. After an ineffective expiry of the time or in the event that the foundation’s management board continues to act persistently in breach of the law, statute or aim of the foundation, the minister may request the court to suspend the foundation’s management board and appoint a compulsory administrator. – I can say that in the event of any request or legal action, we will be defending ourselves. Our position remains unchanged – we treat the pressure the Ministry is attempting to exert upon us as an unprecedented attack on civil society and an attack against freedom of speech, Bartosz Kramek said.
Source: newsweek.pl
Read our statements:
- Statement of the Open Dialog Foundation of 21 July 2017 on the dismantling of the rule of law in Poland
- Open Dialog Foundation’s statement of 23 July 2017
- The statement of the decision of the President of the Republic of Poland of 24 July 2017 regarding the judiciary reform
- The Open Dialog Foundation’s statement of 31 July 2017 (funding and donors, or a few words about ‘soroses’
- Statement of the President of the Open Dialog Foundation Lyudmyla Kozlovska of 17.08.2017