WARSAW — Years of bitter battles between Poland and the EU over allegations that the country’s nationalist government hobbled the independence of its courts — which is holding up billions in EU funds — come to a head this week.
The Polish parliament is due to take a final vote on a bill that rolls back some of those reforms, aimed at meeting “milestones” set out by the European Commission to release €36 billion in grants and loans from its pandemic recovery fund that have been held up over worries that Poland is backsliding on the bloc’s rule of law principles.
The lower house of parliament, the Sejm, moved into action on Monday, with the justice and human rights committee stripping out all 14 amendments added to the bill by the opposition-controlled Senate. The full Sejm, which is narrowly controlled by the ruling United Right coalition, is expected to vote on the full bill by Wednesday. It would then go for a signature to President Andrzej Duda.
However, that won’t mean an immediate infusion of EU cash; the Commission first has to assess whether the law meets its requirements. Brussels is also pressing for Poland to pass a reform of its restrictive law on onshore wind power that has killed almost all new developments — a bill that’s due to be voted on Tuesday.
Warsaw is pretty confident that the Commission will accept the justice reform bill.
“[Justice] Commissioner [Didier] Reynders submitted the proposal to the Commission for review and the Commission assessed the bill positively,” Poland’s EU Affairs Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk told local media Monday.
The Commission did not respond to a request for comment.
The Law and Justice (PiS) party that dominates the government is desperate for Brussels to release the money ahead of a parliamentary election due this fall.
Poland will apply for the funds “in consultation with the Commission in the near future,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told RMF FM radio on Friday.
PiS needs to show voters it has been able to make peace with the EU. Inflation is easing but is expected to remain in double digits through 2023. Economic growth is forecast to falter to below 1 percent this year, down from 4.9 percent in 2022.
The ruling party is also engulfed in a scandal concerning ministries doling out public money to friendly NGOs.
Judges and politicians
The justice system legislation would shift judicial disciplinary matters from the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court, seen as being under the government’s influence, to the Supreme Administrative Court, another top court but one that is viewed as being more independent.
Poland was hit with a record-high daily fine of €1 million starting in October 2021 for not complying with an EU court order to suspend the controversial disciplinary mechanism.
The draft law would also end sanctions against judges who raise questions about the status of fellow judges; many new judges have dubious legal status thanks to the government’s reforms changing how they are appointed.
But critics warn that this week’s changes aren’t the end of the road for the battle between Warsaw and Brussels, as the proposed solutions fail to address the core problem — political control over the judiciary.
“The new law is another slight improvement regarding the disciplinary proceedings against judges, but the European Commission should not consider it as fully realizing the rule of law milestones,” said Jakub Jaraczewski, a research coordinator for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based NGO.
“It would still allow judges lacking full independence to oversee disciplinary proceedings against other judges, a major issue highlighted in rulings from the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights,” Jaraczewski said.
According to Bartłomiej Przymusiński from Iustitia, a judicial organization critical of the government’s efforts to restructure the court system, a third of the judges on the Supreme Administrative Court aren’t fully independent of political influence.
They were appointed by the politically compromised National Council of the Judiciary, a body overhauled by PiS in 2017 in a reform that the European Court of Human Rights said in a 2021 ruling meant it is “no longer offering sufficient guarantees of independence from the legislative or executive powers.”
“It’s just that Strasbourg has not yet ruled on [administrative court judges], unlike the judges of the Supreme Court,” Przymusiński said.
“Once it does, the government may find itself cornered, because it never addressed the core of the problem. It’s like treating fever without finding out what caused it,” Przymusiński added.
