Poland’s central bank chief threatens legal action against fellow members of rate-setting council

Poland’s central bank has been engulfed in an internal conflict, with its governor, Adam Glapiński, and four other members of its Monetary Policy Council (MPC), which sets interest rates, threatening to report fellow members of the council to prosecutors for “violating the law”.

While they have not named the individuals they accuse of wrongdoing, the announcement followed public criticism of the bank by members of the council recently appointed by the opposition-controlled Senate, the upper house of parliament.

In the statement published by the National Bank of Poland (NBP) on Tuesday, Glapiński and four other members of the MPC – Cezary Kochalski, Wiesław Janczyk, Ireneusz Dąbrowski and Henryk Wnorowski – recalled that under Polish law a rate-setter is not allowed to engage in public activities other than academic work, teaching or writing.

They also pointed out that parts of the MPC’s meetings and decisions should remain secret until officially announced.

“In view of the above, we do not accept and express our extreme disapproval of actions which, in our opinion, may constitute a violation of the abovementioned legislation and in connection with which we consider it reasonable to consider filing a notification of suspected crime in this case,” the statement concludes.

In a further statement issued by the NBP yesterday, it claimed that media coverage of “statements by two out of ten members of the MPC… may permanently interfere with the image of NBP and affect the stability of the country’s financial system”.

“For the first time in the history of the NBP, brutal and ruthless politics has appeared in the MPC,” continued the statement, which suggested that some of the council’s members were not “well brought up” and do not “know the rules of social coexistence”.

Polish media have speculated that the two MPC members referred to in the statement are Joanna Tyrowicz and Przemysław Litwiniuk, who joined the council this year after being appointed by the Senate, where the opposition has a majority.

The MPC consists of the bank’s governor and nine other members, appointed in equal numbers by: the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, where the government has a majority; by the president, Andrzej Duda, a government ally; and by the Senate.

Glapiński himself is a longstanding associate of Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, and has been criticised by the opposition, which claims he represents the government’s interests rather than acting independently. He denies the accusations and accuses the opposition of unlawfully threatening him.

Tyrowicz was elected to the MPC for a six-year term in September 2022. A few days after the first meeting she attended in October, Tyrowicz published on LinkedIn her own position on the current economic situation and views on monetary policy.

“Polish law does not allow me to comment on the proceedings of the so-called secret part of the meeting,” she acknowledged. “I can only share my perception of reality.” She published an edited version (named “I fixed it for you”) of the latest NBP statement, which is published after each MPC meeting.

In her edit, Tyrowicz criticized the lack of analysis of the mechanisms behind inflation from 2019 and noted that “the MPC does not take the action necessary to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability” in Poland. Inflation is currently at a 25-year high, reaching 17.2% in September.

Meanwhile, Przemysław Litwiniuk, who joined the rate-setting council in January, told broadcaster TOK FM on Monday that MPC members are allowed to visit Poland’s central bank only once a week, including for the rate-setting meeting. He added that he can meet with NBP analysts only upon receiving approval from the governor’s office.

The NBP dismissed the accusations, writing on Twitter that “MPC members have access to all NBP information and analysis the same as in previous MPC terms”.

However, in an interview with news website Gazeta.pl, Tyrowicz said that, during the ten years she worked for the NBP as an economic advisor (2007-2017), cooperation with MPC members was very different to now.

“The MPC members were in our lives on a daily basis. The number of analyses we prepared for them was very high. There was an MPC working meeting and a two-day decision-making meeting,” she said. “Now there are 3-4 hours of decision-making meeting and this is the end.”

Meanwhile, another Senate-appointed member of the MPC, Ludwik Kotecki, recently gave an interview to Business Insider Polska in which he said that “maintaining negative real interest rates seems deeply inappropriate and an inexplicable wait for a miracle”.

Main image credit: Narodowy Bank Polski/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.