As reported by Politico, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party signaled a retreat on long-running judicial disputes that have soured relations between Warsaw and Brussels. Now the Poland-EU dispute is on the edge between autonomy and control.
A draft law presented to the Polish parliament would implement a reform that Brussels has long sought. The idea would be to move judicial disciplinary matters from a special chamber in the Supreme Court, which is seen as influenced by the government, to another top court, the Supreme Court of Administration, which is viewed as being more independent. The draft law would also end sanctions against judges who raise questions about the status of fellow judges.
The government argued that deep reforms were needed to make Polish courts more efficient, accessible, and cleansed of communist-era judges. Critics see the legal changes, which started in late 2015, as an effort to put the courts under tighter political control.
As a result, the European Commission has held up €35 billion in grants and loans from the pandemic recovery fund, and the Court of Justice of the EU last year imposed a €1 million a day fine for not complying with an EU court order to suspend the country’s controversial disciplinary mechanism for judges.
Judicial independence and the use of disciplinary measures to punish judges who spoke out against the government’s judicial reforms are at the heart of the rule-of-law dispute between Poland and the EU. Poland attempted to backtrack five months ago, but the largely cosmetic reforms did little but change the name of the disciplinary chamber, and weren’t enough for the Commission to agree to unblock the desperately needed EU cash.
Getting EU approval to disburse the frozen funds, however, means the bill has to make it through both chambers of parliament and then be signed by President Andrzej Duda, and that’s not a done deal.
The government has a razor-thin majority in parliament and needs the votes of its far-right junior coalition partner, United Poland, to pass the measure. But the party, led by Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, the architect of the reforms, a hard-line euro-skeptic and Morawiecki’s political rival, wants to delay a decision on whether to support the bill.
Ziobro has blasted proposed compromises with Brussels as “blackmail”. That’s why Morawiecki is asking the opposition for help in moving the legislation forward, but those parties are understandably loath to rush and aid the government.