Polish justice minister asks EU parliament to lift immunity of opposition politicians

Prosecutor general Adam Bodnar, who also serves as justice minister, has asked the European Parliament to lift the immunity of two MEPs from Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party so they can face charges of not complying with a ban on holding public office.

The politicians in question – former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his deputy Maciej Wąsik – have been at the heart of a long-running legal dispute, which included them briefly being imprisoned earlier this year before receiving a pardon from PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.

Those prison sentences were handed down by a court in December, when the pair were found guilty of abusing their powers while running Poland’s Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA). The court also banned them from holding public office for five years.

Despite this, the pair continued to participate in the activities of the Polish parliament, for which they were charged in April. But subsequently they were elected to represent PiS in the European Parliament, granting them legal immunity.

On Monday, Poland’s national prosecutor’s office announced that Bodnar had submitted a request to the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, “for consent to bring criminal proceedings against” Kamiński and Wąsik.

Noting that the pair have already been charged, the prosecutor’s office said that it is now “necessary to supplement the brought charges against the MEPs and then refer the indictment to court” so that they can face trial.

Metsola will refer the Polish prosecutor’s request to the European Parliament’s legal affairs committee, which will produce a recommendation. The matter of whether or not to lift Kamiński and Wąsik’s immunity will then be decided by a simple majority vote in the parliament.

Darius Joński, an MEP from Poland’s main ruling group, Civic Platform, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the the European Parliament is likely to begin reviewing the request in September.

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Kamiński and Wąsik, however, insist that the sentences handed to them in December are not valid because they were previously pardoned by Duda in 2015.

Last year, the Supreme Court found that pardon to itself be invalid but the Constitutional Tribunal – a body widely regarded as being under the influence of PiS – ruled that the Supreme Court did not have the right to make that ruling.

The pair insist that they are victims of “political revenge” by the government that replaced PiS in December. In response to Bodnar’s request to Matsola, Kamiński wrote on X that “this is yet more evidence of the extreme politicisation of the prosecutor’s office”.

“We live in an authoritarian state,” Wąsik told PAP. “Bodnar’s actions are illegal.”

Main image credit: P. Tracz / KPRM (under public domain)

Alicja Ptak

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