President Karol Nawrocki vetoed "the law implementing the so-called DSA – the Digital Services Act," which is the EU regulation on digital services, intended to protect citizens, especially children.
"This week I signed another twelve laws submitted by the Speaker of the Sejm. These are important changes to the labor code, municipal investment plans, Baltic Sea security, and a law regulating the functioning of housing cooperatives. In total, my signature has now appeared on 144 laws sent to me by Parliament. However, today, once again, I must say: there are limits that must not be crossed. That is why I have decided to veto three laws." — reads the post from the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland, which includes a video recording.
"At the end of October last year, during the legislative process, I appealed for comments on the bill implementing this EU regulation. Even then, I had serious doubts about its adoption – doubts concerning the provisions that give control over online content to government-appointed officials, rather than independent courts."
"Unfortunately, these doubts have not been dispelled. Instead of real judicial oversight, an absurd solution has been introduced: an appeal against an official's decision, which citizens must file within 14 days. I want to emphasize this strongly: a situation where a government-appointed official decides what is permissible online resembles the Ministry of Truth from Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' The author wrote about a mechanism of power that first takes control of language, then information, and finally the thoughts of citizens. If the government decides what is 'truth,' what is 'disinformation,' who can speak and who cannot, freedom disappears step by step – under the guise of seemingly noble slogans of security, the common good, or the protection of the weakest."
"The most effective way to suppress freedom is not by prohibiting speech, but by imposing a single, acceptable version of reality. Orwell's Ministry of Truth is a warning symbol, an alarm – against the moment when the state begins to tell citizens not only what they are allowed to do, but also what they are allowed to say and think. The Polish Constitution, in Article 54, states: freedom of speech is a citizen's right." — explains the President.
"Meanwhile, the proposed solutions create a system in which ordinary Poles will have to fight against the bureaucratic apparatus to defend their right to express their opinions. This is unacceptable."
- Based on reporting by WPolityce.
