The subject of the research is the principle of public hearing guaranteed in Article 6 of the ECHR, Article 45 of the Polish Constitution and Article 9 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The author asks whether the current Code of Civil Procedure, shaped by the amendment of July 4, 2019, fully respects this principle. The number of exceptions to it allows for doubts as to whether we can still speak of public hearing as a principle of civil procedure, or whether it coexists with secret classification. The right to a “public hearing” under Art. 6(1) entails an entitlement to an “oral hearing” unless there are exceptional circumstances that justify dispensing with such a hearing. The analysis of the provisions made it possible to formulate a thesis that nowadays public hearing coexists with secret proceedings, but it results from the necessity to ensure fast proceedings and the right to obtain a judgment within a reasonable time.