Sunday
January 21, 2024
Restoring the rule of law in Poland after the election victory of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform-led democratic coalition last October is a major challenge for Poland’s new government, as EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders will stop in Warsaw on Friday (19 January). ). .
The stopover comes after a turbulent week in which tens of thousands of supporters of the former Catholic nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government protested against Tusk’s government, saying it violated human rights, and Polish President Andrzej Duda claimed that the country is now under “rule of law terrorism. “
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Reynders will be meeting Adam Bodnar, Poland’s new justice minister and former ombudsman, to examine his plans to reform the judicial system after the former populist government put in place laws which limited the independence of judges and prosecutors. This gave Zbigniew Ziobro, Bodnar’s predecessor, major sway over the justice system.
The system put in place by PiS allowed them to hound political opponents and gave officials and allies of government impunity when they indulged in fraudulent schemes or when PiS itself channelled budget and state-owned corporation funds to pay off loyalists and finance election campaigns.
These adjustments were challenged before the European Court of Justice (CJEU), which, in a succession of judgments, ruled that the newly created legal establishments intended to appoint judges were valid and that their verdicts were invalid. The Polish government at the time refused to recognize those decisions and did pay the fines imposed through the CJEU for failing to comply with its rulings.
The EU Commission blocked payments to Poland of post-covid-recovery funds (worth €25.3bn in grants and €34.5bn in low-cost loans) and delayed payment of cohesion funds because Poland’s judicial system was no longer seen as independent.
The new Polish government led by Tusk, a former EU Council president, is desperate to unlock these funds and is determined to restore the rule of law which is a condition of disbursement. Reynders is possibly also keen to see the funds flowing to Poland — after they were delayed by the stand-off with the former government.
However, as Bodnar will report from Reynders, the adjustments to the judicial formula devised by PiS can be reversed by new legislation that the new government can pass through parliament, but which requires President Duda’s approval.
The president, though, is a PiS-loyalist who has shown in the past weeks that he is in no mood to work together with Tusk and his allies.
“We are at a point where the legal formula works in the event of force majeure,” says Professor Robert Grzeszczak, an expert in European law at the University of Warsaw, referring to the position taken by President Duda.
“This means that the government is only relying on the direct adoption of new legislation to replace the system, but will have to resort to deception and circumvention to consolidate the independence of the judiciary until the end of President Duda’s term in May 2025. “
Meanwhile, it appears that the commission is counting on Bodnar to introduce a spending package aimed at restoring the independence of the judiciary, but with little chance of good luck given its likely rejection by the president.
Bodnar has made a start by presenting a draft law on the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) which would be staffed by bona-fide judges who would then appoint new judges. Under the PiS regime, the KRS was dominated by political appointees who were responsible for selecting new judges.
It is one of the bodies that were questioned by the ECJ for not being independent. But the result is that the PiS-controlled KRS has appointed more than 2,000 “neo-judges,” as PiS critics call them.
Other draft laws will be tabled by Bodnar in the hope that the president can be persuaded to approve them, but the question facing Reynders is whether the new government’s efforts will be enough for the commission to recognise Poland’s goodwill and unblock the Covid-19 recovery funds and other cohesion fund payments, trusting in the Polish government’s good intentions.
Grzeszcak points out that Hungary’s Victor Orbán, who first faced the Commission’s refusal to dispose of the EU budget due to concerns about the rule of law, saw Brussels release 10 billion euros in December as negotiations continued to convince the Hungarian leader to withdraw his veto on a bill. Assistance programme for Ukraine.
These concessions to the Hungarians have been criticised by the largest political groups in the European Parliament, including Tusk’s European People’s Party, and a solution was reached this week.
But if Reynders and the European Commission were to give Tusk’s government the advantages of the doubt and free up the budget for Poland, the risk of complaint would be low.
Meanwhile, Bodnar himself is facing private complaints from PiS supporters. They accuse him of complicity with Tusk’s “tyrannical” policies.
Groups of PiS supporters hold daily pickets in front of the two criminals where Mariusz Kamiński and Marcin Wąsik, PiS interior minister and his deputy, are serving a two-year sentence for falsifying documents in 2007 to implicate a colleague. of the government coalition in a criminal case. PiS considers them political criminals and demands their prompt release.
Bodnar is already looking for loopholes and fixes to establish his control of a justice ministry still riddled with PiS appointees.
For example, Dariusz Barski, the PiS-appointed prosecutor general.
When other high-ranking prosecutors refused to accept the legality of this dismissal, arguing that the dismissal had to be approved through Duda, Bodnar ordered his critics to use the unused vacation time, as they were legally required to do. DO.
Krzysztof Bobinski is a member of the board of directors of the Warsaw Society of Journalists, an independent NGO. He was a correspondent for the Financial Times in Warsaw from 1976 to 2000. He worked at the Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM) and co-chair of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum.
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