“Joint guidelines on the legal personality of religious or belief communities” adopted by the Venice Commission and the legal personality of churches and other religious organisations in Poland

In 2014, the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission), in cooperation with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR), issued the Joint Guidelines on the Legal Personality of Religious or Belief Communities (hereafter, the 2014 Guidelines). This document contains nonbinding rules (soft law) for state parties in the field of the legal personality of religious and belief communities. Rules proposed by the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR in the 2014 Guidelines are organised into six categories (i.e. general rules and five groups of rules concerning particular issues: general availability of legal personality to religious or belief communities, prerequisites for acquiring legal personality, processes for the acquisition and withdrawal of a legal personality, functioning of legal entities, and loss of legal personality). An analysis of Polish law on the registration of religious community led to the general conclusion that Polish regulations are mostly compliant with the 2014 Guidelines. However doubts about the conformity of the Polish law and the 2014 Guidelines can be raised about the lack of condition of the repetitiveness of violations of laws and/or bylaws to deregister the religious/belief community, wide margin of appreciation of the term ‘gross violation’ used in prerequisites to deregister the religious/belief community, impossibility of challenging decisions dealing with the registration of religious/belief community by a community itself, and the lack of possibility of acquiring the status of ‘church or other religious organisation’ (which involves a variety of rights and privileges) by non-religious belief communities.