The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area 23 ments of the 1989 Vienna Meeting, the 1992 Helsinki Summit, and the 1994 Budapest Summit. While OSCE participating States are not required to abolish the death penalty, they have committed themselves to impose the death penalty only in a manner that is not contrary to their international commitments. The annual OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting provides a forum for peer review of the implementation of human dimension commitments by participating States, including in the area of capital punishment. European Union In the European Union, human rights protection is based on protection of the fundamental rights that are established in the general rules of Community law and protected by the European Court of Justice. It is the EU’s belief that the abolition of capital punishment contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and development of human rights. As such, all countries seeking membership in the Union are required to first abolish the death penalty. This also applied to Poland, of course, as it, too, had to meet all of the EU’s criteria, including those dealing with human rights, before its accession. The EU has reaffirmed its objective of working towards complete abolition of the death penalty in numerous declarations and statements, including its “Guidelines to EU Policy towards Third Countries on the Death Penalty”, EU presidency declarations on abolition of the death penalty, and the Declaration to the European Union Treaty on the abolition of the death penalty. Article II-2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the European Draft Constitutional Treaty also abolish the death penalty and the execution of death sentences. Will the death penalty be reintroduced in Poland? Poland’s Law and Justice party, which won parliamentary elections in 2005, made the reintroduction of the death penalty one of the main elements of its election platform. In 2004, Law and Justice proposed reintroducing the death penalty for genocide and for murder committed with extreme cruelty and motives deserving special condemnation. According to the proposal, capital punishment would not be imposed on pregnant women or persons below the age of 18 at the time of the commission of the crime. On 22 October 2004, the lower house of the Polish Parliament rejected the proposal by a vote of 198-195, with 14 abstentions. Taking into account the very small difference between the number of votes for and against the proposal, conservative lawmakers have already announced plans to take further steps aimed at reintroducing the death penalty, including notifying the Council of Europe that Poland will