The article contributes to the discussion regarding the state certificate Since the new legislation in 2015 was introduced, the number of foreign sessions of the state certificate examinations in Polish as a foreign language has significantly decreased. The article aims to show the impact of the amended legal provisions on the availability of the certificate examinations outside of Poland and, consequently on the level of knowledge about them among potential candidates in Italy. The article is based on the results of the survey conducted by the authors among the students of Polish studies in Italy. ; The article contributes to the discussion regarding the state certificate Since the new legislation in 2015 was introduced, the number of foreign sessions of the state certificate examinations in Polish as a foreign language has significantly decreased. The article aims to show the impact of the amended legal provisions on the availability of the certificate examinations outside of Poland and, consequently on the level of knowledge about them among potential candidates in Italy. The article is based on the results of the survey conducted by the authors among the students of Polish studies in Italy.
ParlaMint is a multilingual set of comparable corpora containing parliamentary debates mostly starting in 2015 and extending to mid-2020, with each corpus being about 20 million words in size. The sessions in the corpora are marked as belonging to the COVID-19 period (after October 2019), or being "reference" (before that date). The corpora have extensive metadata, including aspects of the parliament; the speakers (name, gender, MP status, party affiliation, party coalition/opposition); are structured into time-stamped terms, sessions and meetings; with speeches being marked by the speaker and their role (e.g. chair, regular speaker). The speeches also contain marked-up transcriber comments, such as gaps in the transcription, interruptions, applause, etc. Note that some corpora have further information, e.g. the year of birth of the speakers, links to their Wikipedia articles, their membership in various committees, etc. The corpora are encoded according to the Parla-CLARIN TEI recommendation (https://clarin-eric.github.io/parla-clarin/), but have been validated against the compatible, but much stricter ParlaMint schemas. This entry contains the ParlaMint TEI-encoded corpora with the derived plain text version of the corpus along with TSV metadata on the speeches. Also included is the 2.0 release of the data and scripts available at the GitHub repository of the ParlaMint project. Note that there also exists the linguistically marked-up version of the corpus, which is available at http://hdl.handle.net/11356/1405.
ParlaMint 2.1 is a multilingual set of 17 comparable corpora containing parliamentary debates mostly starting in 2015 and extending to mid-2020, with each corpus being about 20 million words in size. The sessions in the corpora are marked as belonging to the COVID-19 period (after November 1st 2019), or being "reference" (before that date). The corpora have extensive metadata, including aspects of the parliament; the speakers (name, gender, MP status, party affiliation, party coalition/opposition); are structured into time-stamped terms, sessions and meetings; with speeches being marked by the speaker and their role (e.g. chair, regular speaker). The speeches also contain marked-up transcriber comments, such as gaps in the transcription, interruptions, applause, etc. Note that some corpora have further information, e.g. the year of birth of the speakers, links to their Wikipedia articles, their membership in various committees, etc. The corpora are encoded according to the Parla-CLARIN TEI recommendation (https://clarin-eric.github.io/parla-clarin/), but have been validated against the compatible, but much stricter ParlaMint schemas. This entry contains the ParlaMint TEI-encoded corpora with the derived plain text version of the corpus along with TSV metadata on the speeches. Also included is the 2.0 release of the data and scripts available at the GitHub repository of the ParlaMint project. Note that there also exists the linguistically marked-up version of the corpus, which is available at http://hdl.handle.net/11356/1431.
ParlaMint is a multilingual set of comparable corpora containing parliamentary debates mostly starting in 2015 and extending to mid-2020, with each corpus being about 20 million words in size. The sessions in the corpora are marked as belonging to the COVID-19 period (after October 2019), or being "reference" (before that date). The corpora have extensive metadata, including aspects of the parliament; the speakers (name, gender, MP status, party affiliation, party coalition/opposition); are structured into time-stamped terms, sessions and meetings; with speeches being marked by the speaker and their role (e.g. chair, regular speaker). The speeches also contain marked-up transcriber comments, such as gaps in the transcription, interruptions, applause, etc. Note that some corpora have further information, e.g. the year of birth of the speakers, links to their Wikipedia articles, their membership in various committees, etc. The corpora are encoded according to the Parla-CLARIN TEI recommendation (https://clarin-eric.github.io/parla-clarin/), but have been validated against the compatible, but much stricter ParlaMint schemas. This entry contains the linguistically marked-up version of the corpus, while the text version is available at http://hdl.handle.net/11356/1388. The ParlaMint.ana linguistic annotation includes tokenization, sentence segmentation, lemmatisation, Universal Dependencies part-of-speech, morphological features, and syntactic dependencies, and the 4-class CoNLL-2003 named entities. Some corpora also have further linguistic annotations, such as PoS tagging or named entities according to language-specific schemes, with their corpus TEI headers giving further details on the annotation vocabularies and tools. The compressed files include the ParlaMint.ana XML TEI-encoded linguistically annotated corpus; the derived corpus in CoNLL-U with TSV speech metadata; and the vertical files (with registry file), suitable for use with CQP-based concordancers, such as CWB, noSketch Engine or KonText. Also included is the 2.0 release of the data and scripts available at the GitHub repository of the ParlaMint project.
Wladyslaw Grabski government (from 23rd of June to 24th on July, 1920)(Summary)After establishing a new government with Prime Minister Wladyslaw Grabski, because of the fear from the Red Army coming closer to the border, one of the most signifying ideas was to create the Council for the Defence of the State, which could seize part of the Parliament duties and privileges. The Parliament bill, enacted rapidly, defined very wide authority of the Council, including passing regulations and ordinances, which ought to be fulfilled immediately. It was obligatory, that those ordinances, which needed to be fulfilled by Parliament, were to be approved during the next session. That means, the whole system of constituting the law by the Parliament was not restrained, but limited, because the Council got authority to make decisions and force governing bodies to act rapidly. The Council was not "a government", but it enabled to coordinate all state functions with an economic activity and the headquarters' work. Not violating the basis of political system, it was possible to intervene on all fields of state duties. The fact is, that establishing the Council for the Defence of the State weakened the government, as well as the Prime Minister's position. But also his fatuous decision about going to Spa for the meeting with British Prime Minister, with humiliating proposition of conditions of a truce, if only Russian invasion would be stopped, had weakened the position of whole government. Despite the Council for the Defence of the State, government still worked, and after the 1st of July it made eight sessions. Nevertheless, international politics pursued by W. Grabski, especially the case of a Spa meeting, considerably weakened the position of whole government, criticized for the whole period of its shortly existence, and even fought by left-centre factions.
Wladyslaw Grabski government (from 23rd of June to 24th on July, 1920)(Summary)After establishing a new government with Prime Minister Wladyslaw Grabski, because of the fear from the Red Army coming closer to the border, one of the most signifying ideas was to create the Council for the Defence of the State, which could seize part of the Parliament duties and privileges. The Parliament bill, enacted rapidly, defined very wide authority of the Council, including passing regulations and ordinances, which ought to be fulfilled immediately. It was obligatory, that those ordinances, which needed to be fulfilled by Parliament, were to be approved during the next session. That means, the whole system of constituting the law by the Parliament was not restrained, but limited, because the Council got authority to make decisions and force governing bodies to act rapidly. The Council was not "a government", but it enabled to coordinate all state functions with an economic activity and the headquarters' work. Not violating the basis of political system, it was possible to intervene on all fields of state duties. The fact is, that establishing the Council for the Defence of the State weakened the government, as well as the Prime Minister's position. But also his fatuous decision about going to Spa for the meeting with British Prime Minister, with humiliating proposition of conditions of a truce, if only Russian invasion would be stopped, had weakened the position of whole government. Despite the Council for the Defence of the State, government still worked, and after the 1st of July it made eight sessions. Nevertheless, international politics pursued by W. Grabski, especially the case of a Spa meeting, considerably weakened the position of whole government, criticized for the whole period of its shortly existence, and even fought by left-centre factions.
War and peace have perpetually alternated in history. Consequently, peace has always been seen as an endless project, even a dream, to be in brotherhood realized by all members of international community. Since the XVII century the elimination of war and armed conflict has been a political and humanitarian objective of all nations in the world. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations were conceived with the spirit of eliminating the risk of war through the promotion of peace, cooperation and solidarity among Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the subsequent human rights instruments were drafted with a sincere aspiration of promoting the value of peace and human rights worldwide. International practice shows the close linkage between the disregard of human rights and the existence of war and armed conflict. It follows that the role of human rights in the prevention of war and armed conflict is very important. Since 2008 the Human Rights Council has been working on the "Promotion of the right of peoples to peace." Pursuant resolutions 20/15 and 23/16 and 27/17 the Council decided firstly to establish, and secondly and thirdly to extend the mandate of the open-ended working group (OEWG) aimed at progressively negotiating a draft United Nations declaration on the right to peace. The OEGW welcomed in its second session (July 2014) the approach of the Chairperson- Rapporteur, which is basically based on the relationship between the right to life and human rights, peace and development. Consequently, this approach could be developed during the third session of the Working Group (April 2015). At its 8th meeting, on 24 April 2015, the Group adopted the draft report on its third session ad referendum and decided to entrust the Chairperson- Rapporteur with its finalization. ; Wojna i pokój stale zmieniały bieg historii. W konsekwencji, pokój postrzegany był jako marzenie, niedokończony projekt, możliwy do osiągnięcia jedynie dzięki braterstwu wszystkich członków społecznoœci międzynarodowej. Od XVII wieku eliminacja wojny i konfliktów zbrojnych była politycznym i humanitarnym celem wszystkich narodów. Zarówno Liga Narodów, jaki Organizacja Narodów Zjednoczonych powołane zostały w dążeniu do wyeliminowania ryzyka konfliktów przez promocję pokoju, współpracy i solidarnoœci między narodami. Powszechna Deklaracja Praw Człowieka i kolejne międzynarodowe akty prawne gwarantujące ochronę praw człowieka, przyjęte zostały jako wyraz dążenia do promowania wartoœci podstawowych, za jakie uznano pokój i prawa człowieka. Praktyka międzynarodowa pokazuje zależność między naruszaniem praw człowieka a pojawianiem się wojen i konfliktów zbrojnych. Jasnym jest więc, że w zapobieganiu konfliktom zbrojnym istotne znaczenie ma ciągłe podkreślanie wagi praw człowieka. Od 2008 r. Rada Praw Człowieka ONZ podejmuje prace nad promocją prawa człowieka do pokoju. W myœl rezolucji 20/15, 23/16 i 27/17 Rada zdecydowała o ustanowieniu, a następnie o rozszerzeniu mandatu grupy roboczej (tzw. OEWG), której aktywność skierowana jest na opracowanie projektu deklaracji w prawie prawa do pokoju. Podczas drugiej sesji w lipcu 2014 r. eksperci zaakceptowali propozycję Przewodniczącego, wskazującą na związek między prawem do życia, prawami człowieka, pokojem i rozwojem. To podejœcie zostało rozwinięte podczas trzeciej sesji grupy roboczej w kwietniu 2015 r.
ParlaMint 2.1 is a multilingual set of 17 comparable corpora containing parliamentary debates mostly starting in 2015 and extending to mid-2020, with each corpus being about 20 million words in size. The sessions in the corpora are marked as belonging to the COVID-19 period (from November 1st 2019), or being "reference" (before that date). The corpora have extensive metadata, including aspects of the parliament; the speakers (name, gender, MP status, party affiliation, party coalition/opposition); are structured into time-stamped terms, sessions and meetings; with speeches being marked by the speaker and their role (e.g. chair, regular speaker). The speeches also contain marked-up transcriber comments, such as gaps in the transcription, interruptions, applause, etc. Note that some corpora have further information, e.g. the year of birth of the speakers, links to their Wikipedia articles, their membership in various committees, etc. The corpora are encoded according to the Parla-CLARIN TEI recommendation (https://clarin-eric.github.io/parla-clarin/), but have been validated against the compatible, but much stricter ParlaMint schemas. This entry contains the linguistically marked-up version of the corpus, while the text version is available at http://hdl.handle.net/11356/1432. The ParlaMint.ana linguistic annotation includes tokenization, sentence segmentation, lemmatisation, Universal Dependencies part-of-speech, morphological features, and syntactic dependencies, and the 4-class CoNLL-2003 named entities. Some corpora also have further linguistic annotations, such as PoS tagging or named entities according to language-specific schemes, with their corpus TEI headers giving further details on the annotation vocabularies and tools. The compressed files include the ParlaMint.ana XML TEI-encoded linguistically annotated corpus; the derived corpus in CoNLL-U with TSV speech metadata; and the vertical files (with registry file), suitable for use with CQP-based concordancers, such as CWB, noSketch Engine or KonText. Also included is the 2.1 release of the data and scripts available at the GitHub repository of the ParlaMint project. As opposed to the previous version 2.0, this version corrects some errors in various corpora and adds the information on upper / lower house for bicameral parliaments. The vertical files have also been changed to make them easier to use in the concordancers.
In the first part of the article, the author deals with the question of the functions of the Ukrainian Parliament, which include constitutional, legislative, budgetary and financial, controlling and creative functions. Then, there are attempts to clarify the meaning of these functions. The author pays particular attention to the importance of the legislative functions of the Verkhovna Rada [Supreme Council]. The next part deals with the issues concerning the structure of the Parliament, including specific responsibilities of various bodies and their functioning. Next, the author refers to the mode of Parliament's operating, sessions, as well as meetings of committees and commissions. He pays special attention to the fact that the competences of the standing committees of the Ukrainian Parliament cover the entirety of public life in this country. The parliamentary factions are also important for the functioning of the Verkhovna Rada. Further, the author examines the status of Members of Parliament, including the issues of formal and substantive immunity. Next, the subject of the consideration includes the duties and powers arising under the mandate of a people's deputy. Another topic touches upon the incompatibility of a deputy's mandate with execution of other public functions. The article is concluded with general remarks which imply that the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada relies on the parliamentary rules used elsewhere. However, what distinguishes the Verkhovna Rada is its unicameralism and corruption problems connected with the functioning of a young democracy. ; In the first part of the article, the author deals with the question of the functions of the Ukrainian Parliament, which include constitutional, legislative, budgetary and financial, controlling and creative functions. Then, there are attempts to clarify the meaning of these functions. The author pays particular attention to the importance of the legislative functions of the Verkhovna Rada [Supreme Council]. The next part deals with the issues concerning the structure of the Parliament, including specific responsibilities of various bodies and their functioning. Next, the author refers to the mode of Parliament's operating, sessions, as well as meetings of committees and commissions. He pays special attention to the fact that the competences of the standing committees of the Ukrainian Parliament cover the entirety of public life in this country. The parliamentary factions are also important for the functioning of the Verkhovna Rada. Further, the author examines the status of Members of Parliament, including the issues of formal and substantive immunity. Next, the subject of the consideration includes the duties and powers arising under the mandate of a people's deputy. Another topic touches upon the incompatibility of a deputy's mandate with execution of other public functions. The article is concluded with general remarks which imply that the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada relies on the parliamentary rules used elsewhere. However, what distinguishes the Verkhovna Rada is its unicameralism and corruption problems connected with the functioning of a young democracy.
The author of the article deals with the issue of corruption in the Republic of Poland between the 17th and 18th centuries. He starts with a definition of the notion of corruption and the spheres of life it covered. Subsequently, he makes an attempt to counteract corruption aiming at eliminating it from a social and political life. Despite all these attempts, it turned out to be impossible to eliminate corruption so tightly connected especially with a political life of the Polish-Lithuanian country. The issues of committed abuses during the parliamentary session and actions taken by the city, the representatives of which used corruption to realize their postulates in the Parliament are described. It also presents the examples of corrupting the rulers of the Republic of Poland, as well as its closest co-workers. One should notice that both the kings and the court used the same methods in their realization of political conceptions. Corruption actions taken by the foreign governments aiming at paralysing the Polish-Lithuanian politics and weakening the position of the country were regarded as especially dangerous for the Republic of Poland. The actions of corrupting the clerks making the foreign diplomats know many secrets of the Republic of Poland were alarming. The dissolution of the Parliament, paid by the foreign governments aiming at a political and military weakening of the Republic of Poland, and, thus, making it impossible to conduct the reform of the country had a tragic influence on the political history. Finally, the article also presents the issue of a political corruption functioning in during the interregnum when the associates in the battle for the Polish crown were being recruited by means of money.
Proportionality is an intrinsic feature of parliamentary democracy. It is a principle stating that, depending on its size, each political party has a commensurate ability to influence legislature. This is confirmed by comparative studies which show that proportionality is a significant principle in the distribution of parliamentary posts in a majority of West European states. Consequently, even deputies from the smallest parties can chair commissions or lead sessions of the chambers, and by this token participate in the political decision-making process. This softens the domination of the majority party and – in line with Arend Lijphart's concept – generates consensual democracy, based on the search for broad compromises instead of simply outvoting the opponent. Given this picture, a question emerges whether the situation is similar in the representative institution of the European Union, i.e. the European Parliament. The paper answers this question positively. The standard of proportionality has strong roots in the European Parliament forming a fundamental principle expressed in terms of d'Hondt's formula applied to distribute posts among different political groups. This mainly concerns the division of the members of the Presidium and commission chairmen, who exercise the most important decisive functions. The implementation of the idea of appropriate representation may not be ideal, but divergences are rare, insignificant and usually they result from political bargaining that favors smaller fractions. The proportionality principle is also binding when distributing parliamentary posts inside political groups. There is a strong and positive correlation between the size of national delegations and the number of key posts they obtain in the Parliament – members of the Presidium, commission chairmen and coordinators. Only in the case of the latter is proportionality subjected to certain distortions, following from their key political importance. This, however, does not interfere with the general picture of symmetric participation of national groups in appointing parliamentary posts. In conclusion, the standard of proportionality allows all political groups to adequately participate in the work of the European Parliament, which deserves to be emphasized, the more so, as it is not formalized. ; Proportionality is an intrinsic feature of parliamentary democracy. It is a principle stating that, depending on its size, each political party has a commensurate ability to influence legislature. This is confirmed by comparative studies which show that proportionality is a significant principle in the distribution of parliamentary posts in a majority of West European states. Consequently, even deputies from the smallest parties can chair commissions or lead sessions of the chambers, and by this token participate in the political decision-making process. This softens the domination of the majority party and – in line with Arend Lijphart's concept – generates consensual democracy, based on the search for broad compromises instead of simply outvoting the opponent. Given this picture, a question emerges whether the situation is similar in the representative institution of the European Union, i.e. the European Parliament. The paper answers this question positively. The standard of proportionality has strong roots in the European Parliament forming a fundamental principle expressed in terms of d'Hondt's formula applied to distribute posts among different political groups. This mainly concerns the division of the members of the Presidium and commission chairmen, who exercise the most important decisive functions. The implementation of the idea of appropriate representation may not be ideal, but divergences are rare, insignificant and usually they result from political bargaining that favors smaller fractions. The proportionality principle is also binding when distributing parliamentary posts inside political groups. There is a strong and positive correlation between the size of national delegations and the number of key posts they obtain in the Parliament – members of the Presidium, commission chairmen and coordinators. Only in the case of the latter is proportionality subjected to certain distortions, following from their key political importance. This, however, does not interfere with the general picture of symmetric participation of national groups in appointing parliamentary posts. In conclusion, the standard of proportionality allows all political groups to adequately participate in the work of the European Parliament, which deserves to be emphasized, the more so, as it is not formalized.
Niezależnie od perspektywy teoretycznej, aspekt czasu jest odnotowywany, właściwie w każdym studium dotyczącym ewolucji systemów politycznych. Ma on szczególne znaczenie w analizach systemów przechodzących od autorytaryzmu do demokracji. Dotyczy to wielu systemów parlamentarnych, tj. opartych na mechanizmach periodycznych wyborów do ciał przedstawicielskich. Jednak stosunkowo mało uwagi poświęca się zagadnieniu czasu w polskiej literaturze politologicznej. Celem artykułu jest prezentacja wyników badań nad wykorzystaniem czasu w polskim Sejmie w latach 1989–2015, tj. w kadencjach X–VII. Czas był analizowany w sensie fizycznym i organizacyjnym. Na podstawie oficjalnych danych Sejmu RP zbadano dynamikę wykorzystania czasu m.in. poprzez analizę liczby dni obrad i długości posiedzeń. Wyniki badań wskazują, że cechą charakterystyczną badanego okresu jest zmienna dynamika wykorzystania czasu w Sejmie. Ważny wydaje się w tym przypadku zwłaszcza okres między IV i V kadencją. ; Regardless of the theoretical perspective, the aspect of time is recorded in every study regarding the evolution of political systems. It is of particular importance in the analysis of systems transforming from authoritarian to democratic regimes. This applies to many parliamentary systems, i.e. based primarily on mechanisms of periodic elections to representative bodies. Relatively little attention is paid to the topic of time in Polish political science literature. The aim of the article is to present the results of research on the use of time in the Polish Sejm in 1989–2015, i.e. in the term of office X–VII. Time was analyzed in the physical and organizational sense. On the basis of official data from the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, the dynamics of the use of time was examined by analyzing the number of meeting days and the length of Sejm sessions. The research results indicate that the characteristic feature of the analyzed period is the changing dynamics of time use in Sejm. In this regard, the fourth (IV) and the fifth term (V) of Sejm seem to be the most important.
Regardless of the theoretical perspective, the aspect of time is recorded in every study regarding the evolution of political systems. It is of particular importance in the analysis of systems transforming from authoritarian to democratic regimes. This applies to many parliamentary systems, i.e. based primarily on mechanisms of periodic elections to representative bodies. Relatively little attention is paid to the topic of time in Polish political science literature. The aim of the article is to present the results of research on the use of time in the Polish Sejm in 1989–2015, i.e. in the term of office X–VII. Time was analyzed in the physical and organizational sense. On the basis of official data from the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, the dynamics of the use of time was examined by analyzing the number of meeting days and the length of Sejm sessions. The research results indicatethat the characteristic feature of the analyzed period is the changing dynamics of time use in Sejm. In this regard, the fourth (IV) and the fifth term (V) of Sejm seem to be the most important. ; Niezależnie od perspektywy teoretycznej, aspekt czasu jest odnotowywany właściwie w każdym studium dotyczącym ewolucji systemów politycznych. Ma on szczególne znaczenie w analizach systemów przechodzących od autorytaryzmu do demokracji. Dotyczy to wielu systemów parlamentarnych, tj. opartych na mechanizmach periodycznych wyborów do ciał przedstawicielskich. Jednak stosunkowo mało uwagi poświęca się zagadnieniu czasu w polskiej literaturze politologicznej. Celem artykułu jest prezentacja wyników badań nad wykorzystaniem czasu w polskim Sejmie w latach 1989–2015, tj. w kadencjach X–VII. Czas był analizowany w sensie fizycznym i organizacyjnym. Na podstawie oficjalnych danych Sejmu RPzbadano dynamikę wykorzystania czasu m.in. poprzez analizę liczby dni obrad i długości posiedzeń. Wyniki badań wskazują, że cechą charakterystyczną badanego okresu jest zmienna dynamika wykorzystania czasu w Sejmie. Ważny wydaje się w tym przypadku zwłaszcza okres między IV i V kadencją.
Adjusting the legal status, and support policies for migrant workers is an issue on the agenda of international institutions for nearly a hundred years. The first efforts to protect foreign workers have been taken during the first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919. In the following decades ILO activities has led to the preparation of three international documents concerning this issue (non-binding ILO Convention No. 66 in 1939, and Convention No. 97 of 1949, and No. 143 of 1975). For many decades, the problem of the protection and assistance of migrant workers' rights was considered as a narrow issue of international labor law. Codification efforts, undertaken during seventies, has led to the adaptation of the UN document (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families) in 1990, and inclusion this issue into more general area of international human rights law. Despite this fact, and the existence of several categories of documents concerning migrant workers within Council of Europe, the European Union, and even ASEAN, the protection of migrant workers has never been effectively functioning system. The aim of this article is the analysis of the codification of that issue, and the main obstacles to consensus on the protection of migrant workers' rights. The state parties of the UN Convention contains primarily countries of origin of migrants (such as Mexico, Morocco and the Philippines). It seems, therefore, that despite 46 ratifications the, UN convention does not have a global character, and activities of its monitoring body (Committee on Migrant Workers-CMW) reflects primarily demands of sending countries. The article closely examines particularly controversial provisions of the ILO and UN documents from the point of view of current labour migrations and policies of sending and host countries.
Proportionality is an intrinsic feature of parliamentary democracy. It is a principle stating that, depending on its size, each political party has a commensurate ability to influence legislature. This is confirmed by comparative studies which show that proportionality is a significant principle in the distribution of parliamentary posts in a majority of West European states. Consequently, even deputies from the smallest parties can chair commissions or lead sessions of the chambers, and by this token participate in the political decision-making process. This softens the domination of the majority party and – in line with Arend Lijphart's concept – generates consensual democracy, based on the search for broad compromises instead of simply outvoting the opponent. Given this picture, a question emerges whether the situation is similar in the representative institution of the European Union, i.e. the European Parliament. The paper answers this question positively. The standard of proportionality has strong roots in the European Parliament forming a fundamental principle expressed in terms of d'Hondt's formula applied to distribute posts among different political groups. This mainly concerns the division of the members of the Presidium and commission chairmen, who exercise the most important decisive functions. The implementation of the idea of appropriate representation may not be ideal, but divergences are rare, insignificant and usually they result from political bargaining that favors smaller fractions. The proportionality principle is also binding when distributing parliamentary posts inside political groups. There is a strong and positive correlation between the size of national delegations and the number of key posts they obtain in the Parliament – members of the Presidium, commission chairmen and coordinators. Only in the case of the latter is proportionality subjected to certain distortions, following from their key political importance. This, however, does not interfere with the general picture of symmetric participation of national groups in appointing parliamentary posts. In conclusion, the standard of proportionality allows all political groups to adequately participate in the work of the European Parliament, which deserves to be emphasized, the more so, as it is not formalized.
