Wybrane zagadnienia z problematyki rozwoju obszarów wiejskich, płatności bezpośrednich w orzecznictwie sądów administracyjnych

Abstract

The article discusses a range of issues concerning rural development and direct payments which became the subject of administrative courts’ rulings. The courts’ rulings presented in the paper considered the issues that appeared in the work of administrative bodies as a result of the realization of some forms of financial support, which later became the subject of the litigation between a party and a given body. One of such problems especially important for the issue of the development of rural areas was the problem of the legal character of the Plan for the Development of Rural Areas and the question whether the content of the Plan could be a legal basis for adjudicating in the form of an administrative decision or, to put it shortly, whether the Plan could be a source of the law. However, one of the courts has expressed an opinion that the Plan for the Development of Rural Areas, whose project is approved by the Council of Ministers in the form of a resolution, constitutes a source of internal law. Therefore one cannot infer the necessity of complying the specific conditions just from the content of the Plan and one cannot adjudicate in the form of an administrative decision, basing on the resolutions of the Plan. The Plan for the Development of Rural Areas is not a source of external law. Courts judicature is therefore a peculiar instrument of evaluation of the binding legal condition, having the means – within the frames of the law – to shape its interpretation or to take steps either to eliminate a given legal norm as a basis for adjudicating the specific case, or to eliminate the norm from the system of the law.