On the dissonance between the legislature’s actual and declared objectives of shaping the agricultural system

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At the root of the restrictive legal regulations that were introduced in the Act of 11 April 2003 on Shaping the Agricultural System is the assumption of the special importance of agricultural real estate in the socio-economic system in Poland. The objectives of the legislator can be reconstructed primarily based on the preamble to the Act, as well as the content of Article 1 of the UKUR At the same time, these goals should be interpreted as a set of values and substantive requirements for the formation of the agricultural system. The preamble to the UKUR specifies the goals that the legislature intended the regulation to achieve, in particular: to strengthen the protection and development of family farms that are the basis of the agricultural system of the Republic of Poland, ensuring the proper development of agricultural land in the country, ensuring food security for citizens and supporting diversified agricultural activities conducted in accordance with environmental requirements and conducive to rural development. On the other hand, the provision of Article 1 of the UKUR specifies expressis verbis the objectives to be achieved with the use of the instrumentality provided by the law, including among them: 1) improving the area structure of farms; 2) counteracting excessive concentration of agricultural real estate; 3) ensuring that agricultural activities are carried out on family farms by qualified persons; 4) promoting the development of rural areas; 5) implementing and applying agricultural support instruments; 6) active state policy. The tasks expressed in Article 1 of the UKUR are not consistent with the conceptual assumptions expressed by the legislator in the preamble, which are accepted as justification for the legislative activity undertaken. The juxtaposition of the content of the preamble of the UKUR and Article 1 of the UKUR with the political and legal environment in which the law operates, allows one to conclude that there has been a dissonance between the actual and revealed intentions of the legislator’s action.