This article analyses the practice of the Polish administrative courts with respect to application of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, based on a case study of the judgment of the Voivodship Administrative Court in Warsaw of 6 May 2014 (case no. II SA/Wa 117/14), which concerned the recognition of distance learning degrees awarded by Ukrainian universities pursuant to the 1972 Prague Convention. It is argued herein that the reasoning of the court suffers from four major drawbacks: 1) it is at variance with the text, object and purpose of the Prague Convention; 2) it does not take into account the practice in the application of that treaty; 3) it misinterprets the silence of the preparatory work to the Prague Convention on certain issues; and 4) it is inconsistent with international judicial decisions as regards the interpretation of the “special meaning” of one of the terms used in the Convention.

This article analyses the judgment of the Supreme Court of Poland of 25 June 2020, in which the Court refused to recognise registered mail receipt forms issued by the authorities of the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) as foreign official documents, despite the Public Prosecutor General and the claimant arguing to the contrary. The text attempts to show that the ruling is consistent with earlier Polish practice and the majority view in domestic literature. Still, the international jurisprudence shows that there is no clear rule of public international law that would make non-recognition of documents absolutely mandatory in such cases, and some exceptions could even support their recognition under special circumstances. Also, in similar cases foreign national courts do not always refuse recognition.