Polish parliament amends law to strip mandate from lawmakers facing pre-trial detention

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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.

Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, has approved a draft amendment to the law on exercising parliamentary mandates, so that lawmakers facing pre-trial detention will be barred from carrying out their duties or receiving parliamentary benefits, including salaries.

It has been dubbed the “lex Romanowski” in reference to Marcin Romanowski, the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) MP who fled Poland after prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him. Hungary has granted him political asylum.

The bill, criticised by PiS as “political revenge”, will now go to the upper house, the Senate, which is also controlled by the ruling coalition. To take effect, it requires the signature of President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally.

Under the new rules, lawmakers facing pre-trial detention will lose their right to salaries, allowances and other parliamentary benefits. They will also be barred from carrying out parliamentary duties, including field activities and official interventions.

The amendment will apply retroactively, covering cases where courts issued detention orders before the law’s enactment.

In Friday’s vote, 236 MPs supported the bill, 203 opposed it, and none abstained.

It was backed by MPs from the ruling coalition groups Civic Coalition (KO), Third Way (Trzecia Droga) and The Left (Lewica). PiS and the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) voted against it.

The amendment was proposed in response to Romanowski fleeing to Hungary when Polish prosecutors last year issued an arrest warrant for him.

“It was a single case that made these changes necessary,” said the PSL MP Michał Pyrzyk ahead of the vote, reported leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

Romanowski is accused of 11 crimes – including participating in an organised criminal group, using crime as a source of income, and abusing power – relating to his time as deputy justice minister in the PiS government, which ruled from 2015 until the end of last year. He faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted.

Romanowski, who has waived his salary, claimed the amendment aims to prevent him from fulfilling his parliamentary mandate. He argued that the new rules will obstruct his ability to support his constituents, according to Gazeta Wyborcza.

Józefa Szczurek-Żelazko, a PiS MP, criticised the amendment, describing it as “political revenge” during an interview with Polskie Radio.

“Attempts are being made to arrest and prosecute Mr Romanowski and to make him out to be a dangerous criminal, a person who acted in some kind of organised crime group…this is an element of political revenge,” she said.

Another PiS MP, Kazimierz Smoliński, accused the ruling coalition of trying to stage a “veiled coup d’etat”. “You will not put all of us in jail. You will not put all of us in pre-trial detention,” he said during a debate before the vote, as quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.

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: Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwości (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak

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