The EU executive has stepped up its battle with Warsaw over changes to Poland’s highest court said to threaten the rule of law.
As part of an unprecedented investigation, the European commission announced on Wednesday that there was “a systematic threat to the rule of law in Poland”. Frans Timmermans, the commission vice-president, called on the Polish government to take action to guarantee the independence of the constitutional tribunal over the next three months.
The commission has been on a collision course with Poland’s ultraconservative ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) since last December when five judges appointed by the previous government were sacked. The Polish government has also banned the constitutional court from publishing a judgment that criticises new executive controls over judges, which were passed in a hasty parliamentary vote.
The executive power grab rang alarm bells in Brussels, which opened an investigation in January, using the EU’s untested rule-of-law procedure.
After months of shuttle diplomacy between Brussels and Warsaw, the Polish government made some changes to its constitutional court law earlier this month, but the commission said these had not gone far enough. Some changes went in the right direction, Timmermans said, but the commission’s fundamental concerns remained unresolved.
“We are not passing judgment on individual laws,” he said. “To be a member of the EU means you have to have independence of the judiciary, that is the core issue here.”
The recommendations published on Wednesday are the latest episode in the EU executive’s showdown with Poland that could ultimately lead to Warsaw being stripped of its voting rights over European laws. But if the commission does call for sanctions, it is far from certain the punishment would be supported by other EU member states, who would make the final decision.
A spokesman at Poland’s foreign ministry described the commission’s action as premature and said it risked “losing the authority necessary to carry out functions described in [EU] treaties”.
Brussels is also battling Poland, along with Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, over plans to fine member states who refuse to take a centrally determined quota of refugees.
The latest exchanges came on a day when Poland was in the international spotlight for Pope Francis’s visit to Kraków, where he is expected to condemn religious violence. But the Vatican appears to have toned down its criticism of Polish politicians’ views. Ahead of the pope’s visit, a Polish bishops’ spokesman had blamed “inappropriate” political discourse for creating an “artificial fear of Muslims” in Poland, according to the Italian press. The BBC reported that the remarks appeared to have been removed from the Vatican website.
