The Constitutional Tribunal will investigate whether the Istanbul Convention is compatible with the Polish Constitution

The Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has received the motion of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki regarding the so-called Istanbul Convention, as announced on Thursday.

The Prime Minister informed that he had sent a motion to the Constitutional Tribunal concerning the Istanbul Convention’s compliance with the Constitution on Thursday. The TK spokeswoman assured that the Tribunal would deal with this case „in the same way as it does with other documents”.

Prime Minister Morawiecki claimed that

„there are numerous accusations made in public discussion against the Istanbul Convention, namely that it undermines our legal order, that it has an ideological basis, wrongly defines the real sources of violence against women and does not provide effective tools to combat domestic violence”.

These are very serious doubts, which cannot be ignored. As the government, we share some of these concerns and have the right to believe that the document may be unconstitutional in terms of, among other things, the impartiality of the state in worldview matters and the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with their individual convictions

— pointed out the head of government on Thursday.

The 2011 Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the so-called Istanbul Convention) aims, according to its authors, to protect women from all forms of violence and discrimination. The Convention assumes that there is a connection between violence and tradition, religion and unequal treatment, which in Poland arouses great controversy.

Tłum.K.J.