President Duda signs government budget but sends parts to constitutional court

Jan 17, 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.

President Andrzej Duda, who is aligned with Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has signed off on the government’s 2025 budget. However, he has also sent parts of the spending plans to the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), another PiS-aligned body, for assessment.

In doing so, Duda stopped short of withholding approval of the budget entirely, as some in PiS had advocated. However, his decision still sets Poland on course for a further deepening of its ongoing constitutional and rule-of-law crisis, given that the government does not recognise the TK’s legitimacy.

Under Poland’s constitution, after the budget act is approved by parliament, it passes to the president, who has seven days to make one of three choices: sign it into law; sign it but also refer it to the TK for assessment; refuse to sign it and refer it to the TK. Unlike with normal bills, the president cannot veto the budget.

The 2025 budget act was sent to Duda by parliament on Monday 13 January. On Friday afternoon, his chancellery announced that the president had gone with option number two: signing the bill into law but directing parts of it to the TK for assessment.

What that means in practice is that the budget now goes into effect, but parts of it can still be rejected later by the TK. Duda did the same thing with last year’s budget but the TK still has not ruled on his request, notes Business Insider Polska.

 

Speaking to journalists outside the presidential palace, the head of Duda’s office, Małgorzata Paprocka, said that he had signed the budget into law because it contains pay raises for groups such as teachers, soldiers and other uniformed officers, as well as increases in pensions and other social support.

However, she added that the president has concerns over parts of the budget that significantly cut funding for two judicial bodies: the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) and the TK itself.

Both institutions are seen as being under the influence of PiS due to actions it undertook during its time in power from 2015 to 2023. Both are also deemed illegitimate by the government, a position likewise held by many legal experts and confirmed by court rulings, including by the European Court of Justice.

The current government, led by Donald Tusk, has attempted to overhaul both the TK and KRS to make both bodies legitimate once again. However, Duda has refused to sign bills aiming to reform these institutions, instead sending them to the TK for assessment.

In the 2025 budget, the government’s majority in parliament cut the amount of money granted to the KRS by 23% compared to what it had requested and the TK by 17%. It also cut the requested budget of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), another body led by a PiS appointee, by 54%.

PiS argues that those cuts violate two articles of the constitution: one guaranteeing that TK judges be “provided with working conditions and remuneration corresponding to the dignity of the office and the scope of their duties”, and the other defining the separation of powers between legislative, executive and judicial branches.

Speaking today, Paprocka said that, “in the opinion of the president, such serious changes in the budgets, primarily of the TK and the KRS, should be subject to assessment by the TK as to whether these changes were introduced in accordance with the law in force in Poland”.

The TK is now in the unusual position of having to issue a ruling on the constitutionality of cuts to its own budget. But whatever it decides, the government is certain to ignore it, as it has done with other TK rulings up to this point. It argues they are invalid as the court is not legitimately formed.

“The pseudo-tribunal will now rule on its own case,” Janusz Cichoń, an MP from the ruling coalition, told news website Interia. “It does not have the status of a constitutional court. The legality of the KRS is also questioned. As a parliament, we have decided that no remuneration or allowances are due for work in illegal bodies.”

PiS MP Henryk Kowalczyk, meanwhile, said that Duda had chosen a “happy medium” between simply signing the budget or refusing to do so. He said that the cuts contained in the current budget are “absolutely unconstitutional”.


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: KPRM (under CC BY 3.0 PL)

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