Abstract

The article is an attempt to verify existence of the confidentiality privilege of local government employees. That privilege has been verified negatively. There are mo legal grounds for its introduction. It may not be Art. 24.2.3 of the Act on local government employees. The confidentiality privilege, as an exception from the principle of access to information concerning the performance of public tasks, laid down in Art. 61 of the Polish Constitution, must be introduced by legislation and the provisions thereof should be detailed and complete (judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal dated 17 May 2012 (K 10/11, Dz.U. of 2012, item 627). Therefore, it is impermissible to adopt blanket provisions which would allow executive authorities to finally shape those restrictions, especially as regards delimiting their scope. The indicated provision of the Act on local government employees should be, therefore, deemed to be insufficient to establish local government employee privilege of confidentiality as a professional privilege. It also seems that its introduction is pointless since there is not justification for confidentiality of information acquired in connection with performance of official duties. It would be in contradiction to the requirement of active information policy, referred to in Art. 24.2.2 of the Act, as well as the nature of work of local government employees. The duty of confidentiality with respect to legally protected information seems to be sufficient for this group of employees.