Finance minister withholds payments to opposition PiS party due to “legal doubts”

Jan 9, 2025 | Law, Politics

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Finance minister Andrzej Domański has refused to comply with a decision by the National Electoral Commission (PKW) to pay out millions of zloty in public subsidies to Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main opposition party.

He claims that there remains a lack of legal clarity about the situation and has asked the PKW for further information. PiS, however, says that Domański is obliged to pay out the money and will be held criminally responsible for failing to do so.

Wednesday’s decision marked the latest twist in a long-running saga that began in August when a narrow majority of five of the PKW’s nine members voted to reject PiS’s financial report from the 2023 election campaign due to spending irregularities.

PiS appealed against that decision and, in December, the chamber of the Supreme Court tasked with overseeing elections upheld that appeal and overturned the PKW’s decision. However, that chamber, which was created by PiS when it was in power, has been deemed unlawful due to containing illegitimately appointed judges.

As a result, on 16 December the PKW – again by a 5-4 margin – voted to not accept the Supreme Court’s decision until the status of the chamber in question was “regulated”.

But just two weeks later – this time by a 4-3 margin after two members abstained from voting – the electoral commission reversed that decision and approved PiS’s financial report for the 2023 election campaign.

 

That put the ball in Domański’s court. As finance minister, he is responsible for paying the public subsidies that political parties receive in Poland. In PiS’s case, tens of millions of zloty are at stake.

On Wednesday afternoon, however, Domański released a statement saying that he would not pay out the money until he can “clarify all legal doubts” around the issue. He argued, for example, that the PKW’s resolution approving payments to PiS is “internally contradictory”.

In that resolution, the PKW said it was being adopted “solely as a result” of the ruling by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

But it then immediately added that such a ruling “must come from a body that is a court within the meaning of the constitution and the electoral code” and that the PKW “does not prejudge that the chamber…is a court within the meaning of the constitution and does not prejudge the effectiveness of the ruling”.

Domański says that the wording of the resolution “raises very serious doubts regarding interpretation, including the manner of properly implementing” it. He has therefore issued a request to the PKW to “clarify any doubts” about its meaning.

However, on Thursday morning, the head of the PKW, Sylwester Marciniak, told broadcaster Polskie Radio that the commission’s resolution was unambiguous and that Domański should pay out PiS’s funds.

“If the resolution was unclear, the letter from the PKW informing [Domański] about the obligation to pay would not have been sent,” said Marciniak. “The situation is clear. The question is whether Domański will act like a good official, not a politician, and will implement the PKW’s resolution.”

Marciniak – who was appointed head of the PKW during PiS’s time in power – was among the commission’s four members who voted in favour of adopting the resolution.

But one of those who voted against it, Ryszard Kalisz, an appointee of the current ruling coalition, welcomed Domański’s “reasonable solution” to ask the PKW for further explanation. The resolution is “legally unclear”, Kalisz told broadcaster TVN.

One of the two PKW members who abstained from the final vote on PiS’s financial declaration, Ryszard Balicki, another appointee of the current ruling coalition, told news website Wirtualna Polska that it should be a court or legislators who resolve the legal doubts, not the electoral commission.

Meanwhile, a number of PiS politicians said that Domański should face criminal charges for his failure to carry out his duties by accepting the PKW’s decision to pay out the opposition party’s funds.

Earlier this week, PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek warned Domański that “failure to implement statutory obligations gives rise to constitutional and criminal liability”. He shared an image of a notification to prosecutors being submitted by the party accusing the finance minister of violating the law.

Politicians from the ruling coalition, however, welcomed Domański’s decision. Włodzimierz Czarzasty, a deputy speaker of parliament, said it was “very good” the finance minister had asked the PKW for further clarification because “no one understands” its resolution.

The disputed legal status of the Supreme Court’s chamber has also led to concerns over how its rulings on this year’s presidential elections – including the validation of the final results – will be interpreted.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Kancelaria Premiera/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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