A senior member of Poland’s ruling party has said that a “reform” to the government’s contentious overhaul of the judiciary is “ready” and that the country would “in a sense” be “meeting the expectations” of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
His remarks seem to confirm Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s hints that the government is preparing to compromise with Brussels.
Last week, the CJEU found the disciplinary chamber for judges created by the Polish government to be in violation of European law and ordered it to be immediately suspended.
Warsaw has so far not complied with the rulings and maintains that in such “constitutional matters, where the European Union does not have competences, national law has primacy over European law”.
Ryszard Terlecki, the leader of the parliamentary caucus of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said on Friday that the government had a reform “ready”. He noted, however, that amendments to the current laws contested by the EU had not been prepared yet.
Terlecki said that the improvements would only be presented “in the autumn”. “We are, in a sense, meeting the expectations of the Tribunal,” the leader of PiS’s parliamentary caucus told journalists.
Terlecki’s comments echo those made the previous day by Morawiecki, who admitted that the government’s overhaul of the judiciary has “not lived up to expectations” and said it may “review” its contentious laws.
“The operation of the disciplinary chamber…can and should be reviewed,” said the prime minister, noting that he will be “discussing this with the cabinet”. Morawiecki’s remarks were widely seen as suggesting that Warsaw is preparing to compromise with Brussels.
The prime minister claimed that the chamber had been intended to end the widespread feeling that judges “had impunity”.
Opinion polls have indeed shown that most Poles are in favour of judicial reform, though also that most oppose PiS’s judicial policies and regard them as an attempt to violate the rule of law.
Małgorzata Manowska, President of the Supreme Court, told Rzeczpospolita daily that she was also “constantly wondering what further steps to take”. She said that she was “waiting for information from the prime minister” upon which she would “take action”.
“The government is responsible for relations with the EU and the verdict has been notified to the government,” said the judge, who was appointed to her office by President Andrzej Duda last year.
“I would recommend changing…the regulations so as to protect Poland from attacks,” she told TVN24 in another interview. She added that the executive branch “should on the one hand do so in such a way as to meet the requirements” of the EU but “by no means” return to the former legal framework.
Main image credit: jaime.silva/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
