On 30 January 2017, the Provincial Administrative Court reconsidered the petition for staying enforcement of the contested museum merger order
On 30 January 2017, the ProvincialAdministrative Court reconsidered the petition for staying enforcement of the contested museum merger order.
The Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw reconsidered the petition for staying enforcement of the contested disposition, filed by the Museum of the Second World War, Director of the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, and the Ombudsman. In the decision of 30 January 2017, the Court suspended enforcement of the contested disposition of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage to merge the following state institutions of culture: the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk, and the Museum of Westerplatte and the War of 1939 and to form a new state institution of culture: the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk until the time the matter would be validly resolved.
The Court decision is not yet valid and final. The parties to the proceedings can file their complaints against it with the Supreme Administrative Court within 7 days following the day the decision and the reasons thereof are served.
In its reasons for granting the petition to stay the enforcement, the Court noted that the contestants demonstrated plausibility that the effects of the disposition issued might be hardly reversible. The Court noted further that even though the merger of the two institutions of culture would result in the employees of the fusing establishments becoming the employees of the Museum and retaining their rights under their contracts of employment, the involved organisational changes (employment relationships included) required suspension of the contested disposition.
The Court also weighed the position of the participant to the proceedings, where the participant declared it was considering the option of cancelling the donation agreement under which the Municipality of Gdańsk had donated onto the Second World War Museum the land intended to serve the public goal of ‘construction and operation of the Second World War Museum, a site commemorating the tragic face of war and its victims’, the fact pointed out by the Ombudsman.
