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Katarzyna Barszczewska, a woman suffering from cerebral palsy, and her partner came last year to a local Register Office to arrange for their marriage ceremony. The registrar refused to solemnize the couple’s marriage and referred the case to the court. In January 2012 the court consented to the marriage between Katarzyna Barszczewska and her partner.

Delegated judges, whose number has been increasing year by year, are becoming more and more important part of the Ministry of Justice staff. Their number has gone up five times in last five years. However, there are no detailed recruitment and selection procedures for vacant civil service posts within the Ministry, says the report of the HFHR.

In January 2012, the Court of Appeal in Cracow changed the decision of the first-instance court and dismissed the lawsuit for the protection of personal interests brought against Andrzej Jezior in an attempt to hold him liable for comments posted by internet users on his blog.

The HFHR appealed to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to strictly supervise the enforcement of the ECtHR judgement entered in the case Kubaszewski v. Poland. The case involves an infringement of the right to freedom of expression and demonstrates a broader problem of disregarding the relevant standards of the ECtHR by Polish courts.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights requested Jan Dworak, the head of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), to disclose detailed information on the procedure of awarding television broadcast licences for the operation of multiplex digital terrestrial broadcasting services.

In January 2012, the first hearing in the proceedings against the head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) was held in the Circuit Court in Warsaw. The suit, filed by Bogdan Wróblewski, a journalist with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, involves an infringement of claimant’s personal interests, which allegedly consisted in the CBA’s unlawful acquisition of journalist’s telecommunications data, including his phone records, in years 2005-2007.

In January 2012 the new Hungarian media act entered into force. It is a comprehensive regulation of all types of media, namely printed press, broadcast programming and the Internet. The new legislation adopted by the Hungarian authorities has come in for criticism from some EU members states, the EC and the EP for its non-compliance with the international standards of the freedom of speech and safeguards for media independence.

The President of the Supreme Court has disclosed to the HFHR a report compiled by the team responsible for implementing the procedure for publication Court’s decisions and deletion of any sensitive data contained in such rulings. The President of the Supreme Court set up this team in May 2011.

In December 2011 the Circuit Court in Świdnica heard the appeal in the case of an allegedly defamatory statement included in a reader’s article sent to a newspaper. The Court reversed the judgement entered by the District (first-instance) Court in September 2011 and remanded the case for retrial. The District Court will be hearing the case for the third time.