President of the Republic of Poland in the procedure of creating the Council of Ministers in 1996–2005

Abstract

The objective of the present article is to systematize knowledge about the actual role of the President of the Republic of Poland in the procedure of creating the Council of Ministers in the years 1996–2005, i.e. during the period of the Constitutional Act of 17 October 1992, commonly known as the Small Constitution and the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997. We performed a thorough analysis constitutional competences of the President of the Republic of Poland in the process of forming the Council of Ministers, as described in the subject literature, and explained them comprehensively. Due to the fact that the formation of the cabinet is a combination of legal and factual activities, some of which are of confidential nature (personal consultations on the staffing of ministerial positions and program assumptions), we carried out an analysis of the impact that Aleksander Kwaśniewski as the head of state had on the panel of the cabinets of Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Jerzy Buzek, Leszek Miller, Marek Belka (twice) and Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.