Krakow (Poland) 11 Feb. Polish President Andrzej Duda has decided to refer the proposed judicial reform amendment to the Constitutional Court (TC) for consideration, rather than immediately approving it.
In a televised message Friday evening, Duda explained that, according to him, the text “raises serious controversies of a constitutional nature” and therefore chose to ask the Polish TC “for an evaluation” before ratifying it.
The proposed amendment to judicial reform, promoted by the Polish government, was approved in Parliament and then rejected in the Senate, where the opposition has a majority.
After that, the law was sent to the president so that he could decide whether to sanction it or not.
The fact that Duda, on the other hand, chose to send him to the TC is something unusual since in his nearly seven years in office, he had never made a similar decision with any other law.
The proposal that modifies the Polish justice is motivated by the demands of the European Union (EU) towards Warsaw, with regard to the guarantee of the independence of judges and their control bodies.
From the Polish government’s point of view, with the amendment that the TC will now examine, European expectations have been met and this would allow the release of European recovery funds allocated to Poland.
However, this reform has critics within the Polish government itself, since the party led by the Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, which governs in coalition with Law and Justice, has always been against a law which, according to Ziobro “brings the Poland on its knees in the face of blackmail from Brussels”.
On the other hand, the TC faces a complicated situation since its president, Julia Przylebska, decided to remain in office despite the fact that a large part of the judiciary indicated that the stipulated six years had already expired.
Przylebska, for her part, considers that the law which limits the mandate to this duration does not apply in her case, since she took office a few days after its promulgation, but before its entry into force.