The Polish Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, has presented a bill for the reform of the judicial system, which aims to align the Polish judicial system with the demands of the European Commission. The European Commission has made judicial reform a condition for the disbursement of European Union funds intended for Poland.
Bodnar said at a press conference on Friday that the change in the National Judicial Council (KRS) is necessary to restore the independence of Poland’s courts. Although the bill’s approval by both houses of parliament is not in question, Polish President Andrzej Duda could veto it. Given that 60% of the votes of deputies are needed to override the presidential veto and that the coalition has only 248 out of 460 seats in the lower house of the Polish parliament, the future of judicial reform is not very clear.
In the form of judicial reform, this is both the main campaign promise of the new Polish liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the demand of the European institutions. Without ensuring the independence of the courts, Poland cannot access European Union funding, which has been frozen for several years in a row.
The controversy over the politicization of the Polish justice system dates back to 2015, when the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, of which Duda was a member before becoming president, won the elections.
PiS implemented judicial reform, during which the principle of appointment of KRS members was changed. KRS is an important body responsible for appointing judges. If before the members of the KRS were appointed by the judges themselves, and therefore the judges themselves were indirectly responsible for the appointment of new judges, after the reform of the PiS the members of the KRS are appointed by all three branches of power, and therefore the legislators and the government have an important role in the composition of the body that appoints judges at the time of determination.
Thanks to the change, PiS was able to influence the appointment of new judges, which was condemned by the European Commission. In 2021, the umbrella organization bringing together the European Councils for Justice expelled the Polish KRS from its ranks. The European Court of Human Rights has also ruled that the KRS is not an institution independent of parliament and government.
Under the reforms proposed by the new centrist Polish government, the 25 members of the KRS would once again be decided by the same judges.
“I hope the bill gets the president’s approval and the president doesn’t veto it. If that happens, we’ll try again with some changes to the bill,” Bodnar said.
However, Duda is likely to veto the bill. The president is already embroiled in bitter disputes with the new government over Poland’s state budget and the pardon of two PiS lawmakers convicted of abuse of power.
Tensions escalated further on Friday when Bodnar fired prosecutor Dariusz Barski, appointed by the previous justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro.
Even if the Polish government succeeds in implementing judicial reform, the question arises of what to do with the judges appointed by the reorganized KRS under PiS. More than 2,000 judges have taken office during PiS’s eight years in power, and some argue that the decisions made by these judges are not legitimate.
According to Piotr Bogdanowicz, professor of European Union law at the University of Warsaw, the Tusk government’s judicial reform could, according to some, be in conflict with the rule of law.
“The most important and most difficult thing is what to do with the judges appointed under a flawed procedure and with the sentences they issued. If we want to overturn their sentences, it would be a very strong intervention of the legislative power in the judicial system,” he said.
2024-01-12 19:21:00
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