Judicial reforms “haven’t turned out well”, says Poland’s PM, blaming justice minister

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has admitted that his government’s judicial reforms – which have led to chaos in the courts and brought Poland into conflict with the European Union – have not been a success.

He blames the situation on a junior coalition partner led by the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, who is widely seen as a rival of Morawiecki. Ziobro has, however, hit back, blaming Morawiecki and President Andrzej Duda for blocking some of his proposed reforms.

“The reform of the judiciary has not turned out too well for them,” Morawiecki told Polsat News. “Unfortunately we handed it over to United Poland and it turned out like it turned out.”

United Poland (Solidarna Polska) is the party led by Ziobro (and which recently changed its name to Sovereign Poland). It is a junior partner to Morwiecki’s Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main ruling party. Ziobro and Morawiecki have often clashed over judicial reform and relations with the EU.

“I’m trying very hard to encourage the justice minister to do everything in his power to shorten the time of proceedings before the courts and to improve the courts before [this autumn’s] elections, to reduce the costs of the functioning of the justice system,” added the prime minister.

Since the PiS-led United Right (Zjednoczona Prawica) coalition came to power in 2015, it has undertaken a radical overhaul of the judicial system, arguing that this was necessary to remove a “caste” of “post-communist” judges and to improve the functioning of the courts.

However, various indicators show that the speed and efficiency of the court system have worsened over that period. Meanwhile, a number of Polish and European court rulings have found aspects of the reforms to be unlawful, resulting in a chaotic situation whereby some judges refuse to recognise the legitimacy of others.

Opinion polls also show that a majority of the public think the reforms have made courts function worse than before, and that the aim was to bring the justice system under political control rather than to improve its functioning.

The reforms have also brought Warsaw into conflict with Brussels, which sees them as a violation of the rule of law, in particular the independence of the judiciary. That has resulted in Poland currently receiving daily fines and having billions of euros of post-pandemic recovery funds and cohesion funds frozen.

In response to Morawiecki’s remarks, Ziobro issued a statement saying that he “fully agrees that the reform of the judiciary did not go completely as we wanted it to”.

However, he argued that this was because parts of it were vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in 2017 while others have been blocked by Morawiecki himself due to “EU blackmail”.

Despite their sparring, both leaders made clear that they still want PiS and Sovereign Poland to remain in coalition with one another.

“We are going to the elections together as the United Right; it is important to be the United Right despite some differences,” Morawiecki told Polsat.

“I fully agree,” responded Ziobro. “Only a truly United Right will bring victory to Poland.”

The PiS-led coalition is attempting to win an unprecedented third term in office this autumn. It remains ahead in the polls, but with a level of support that would not currently guarantee it a parliamentary majority, raising the possibility of an opposition coalition taking power instead.

Main image credit: KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.