Ruling party violates Poland’s constitution: Freedom House
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“In Poland, the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has been waging a war against the judiciary in an attempt to convert it into a pliant political tool. After devoting its initial years in office to an illegal takeover of the country’s constitutional court and the council responsible for judicial appointments, the PiS government started persecuting individual judges in 2019. By early 2020, judges who criticized the government’s overhaul or simply applied European Union (EU) law correctly were subjected to disciplinary action. Such an attack on a core tenet of democracy – that there are legal limits on a government’s power, enforced by independent courts – would have been unimaginable in Europe before PiS made it a reality,” states the latest Nations in Transit report published on May 6 by the US-based democracy monitor Freedom House.
“Among the region’s waning democracies, Poland continues to stand out for the systematic, targeted, and aggressive nature of the government’s attacks on judicial independence. Since it took power in 2015, PiS has overseen an unprecedented offensive against the very idea that laws and courts can, or should, limit executive action. PiS has not just accused judges of ideological bias and appointed loyal allies to available positions – steps that might be problematic but are not unheard of in democracies during periods of political polarization. The party has gone much further than that. It has violated Poland’s constitution, passed laws that permanently hamper the impartial functioning of the courts, rigged the appointment process for judges, created a mechanism to reopen final court rulings, set up a partisan disciplinary regime for the judiciary, and finally, in 2019, it started punishing individual judges who were critical of these steps,” says Freedom House, adding that “if Poland continues on this course, it will join hybrid regimes and autocracies that routinely mete out politicized justice.”
Founded in October 1941 and headquartered in Washington DC, Freedom House is a US-based, US government-funded non-profit NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.
