Ochrona gospodarstwa rodzinnego – uwagi de lege lata i de lege ferenda

The subject matter of the family farm protection can and should be considered on the ground of 1) provisions of the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic of 1997 and 2) regulations of common legislation. The first part of the article deals with the notions of the legal character of Article 23 of the Constitution, the notion of property in Article 21 whose character is of political directive and Article 64 of the Constitution whose contents are formed by the citizen’s right to property. The provision of the latter article finds its place with no conflict in the network of the Civil Code notions. Constitutional provisions related to property are concise and are formulated on two planes: subject’s right law (Article 64) and object’s law (Articles 23, 20 and 21). They allow to recognise the existence of other types of property, agricultural property among others, which requires marking its limitations and the scope of protection. The relation of the act on the creation of agricultural system to the provision of Article 23 of the Constitution as well as its other regulations is with respect to the question about the shape of property transformations in agriculture in the conditions of market economy in Poland, where the family farm would be under special protection. The answer may be negative since the act does not meet the prerequisites accepted in its preamble. In the second part of the article there was made an attempt to present legal means of the protection of the family farm de lege ferenda postulating 1) the introduction of new contents of Article 23, the correction of Article 21 ( possibly 64) of the Constitution, 2) the change (broadening) the subject of the act on the creation of agricultural system as well as determining explicitly its place in the provisions of agricultural law and joining legislative activities marked in the ‘Green Book’ in the part on agricultural property turnover, 3) considering the introduction of debt recovery provision, and 4) testamentary distribution, with the reservation of the family farm protection.