Prawo do samorządu - prawo obywateli i prawo mieszkańców

Authors:

• Hubert Izdebski

Abstract

As in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or the Republic of Lithuania, the right to self-government may be understood as a qualified formula of the guarantee of independence of territorial self-government units, but it can also, and even primarily, be understood as a basic right of residents and, in strictly corporate terms, citizens, to comprehensively participate in the handling of generally relevant public matters, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, for a given level of territorial self-government units, which is appropriate to the given self-government community. The high position to which the territorial self-government is entitled, which is not awarded as a result of an act of will of the exponents of the State imperium, in a democratic State of law serving the purpose of implementing the principles of subsidiarity and decentralization, essentially arises from the right to self-government to which we are all entitled; it constitutes the basic legal restriction of the centralization trends which appear every now and again. The role of self-government is the operational implementation of the right to self-government, while the role of the State authority is to provide conditions for exercising the right to self-government. However, the role of citizens/residents and, wherever possible, likewise other residents should be to exercise their right to self-government as fully as possible.