On 4th of November the Polish Sejm passed the Act on National Minorities, which had been in the making for 11 years. The act contains a catalogue of the rights of the people belonging to minorities, which are already guaranteed by other Polish legal acts. The right to use a minority language as a auxiliary language at offices of administration, which has been the aim of the exertions of minority circle members in Poland, was not included in the act. (08-11-04)

In Poland minorities make up about 1% of the population, meaning somewhat less than 4 million people. The most numerous groups are: the Belarussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Roma, and Lemks.

Various legal acts, which are in force in Poland, guarantee a series of rights and liberties to the people belonging to minorities, e.g.: the right to education in the minority language, the right to use the first name and surname in the original form, the right to access to public media, the right to receive the state´s support for the minority language and culture, the right to freely use the minority language in private life, as well as publicly, and to spread and exchange information in the minority language. Forced assimilation of the members of minorities is forbidden. However, the act, which took 11 years to create, compiled all these rights into one document. Unfortunately, at the instance of some members of the Parliament the new right to use the minority language as a auxiliary language at offices of administration was not included in it.

The Act on National Minorities gives the definition of a national and ethnic minority, as well as enumerates the minority groups, which under protection in Poland. In accordance with the document, a national minority is a group, which has been living in Poland for over a hundred years and originates from a nation that has its own country /like e.g. the Belarusians/, and an ethnic minority differs from a national minority in such a way that it does not have its own national state /like e.g. the Roma/. In addition to this, special rights concerning the protection of a language are granted to the Kashubs, described in the act as only linguistic minority in Poland.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as the Joint Government and National and Ethnic Minorities Committee, are responsible for the Act´s implementation.