Brak obowiązku stawiennictwa oskarżyciela publicznego na rozprawie w kontekście podstawowych zasad procesu karnego

The principle of legalism places upon the public prosecutor the obligation o pressing charges to a court of law and then to support this claim in the course of the lawsuit. It seems obvious that in order to execute this duty in an appropriate manner, the public prosecutor should attend the trial and actively participate in it. However, in regulation Art. 46 §2 k.p.k., which was introduced by way of an amendment issued on 11 March 2016, the legislator stipulated a regulation which permits the public prosecutor not to appear during the trial, if the preliminary legal proceedings concluded in the form of investigation. Obviously, the task of this regulation is to accelerate the proceedings in cases of lesser calibre, which are cases in which an investigation is conducted. However, it is necessary to consider the aforementioned regulation in the context of the basic principles of a criminal lawsuit and the analysis of the consequences of such regulations. Therefore, in the first instance one made reference to the most important regulations contained in the basis acts of international law, i.e. the European Convention of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which emphasise above all the significance of independence and impartiality, as well as the principle of a quick and efficient operation of the procedure. It was also necessary to refer the substantive regulation to the principle of the contradictoriness of the criminal lawsuit, which stipulates inter alia the separation of lawsuit-related roles and the passivity of the court in reference to the initiative of the parties who argue their cases.