EU Gives Poland Three Months to Resolve Court Crisis
July 27 2016 - 4:59PM
Dow Jones News
By Valentina Pop and Natalia Drozdiak
BRUSSELS -- The European Union's executive on Wednesday gave
Poland three months to alter its stance toward the country's top
court, an issue over which the government in Warsaw has drawn sharp
criticism from its Western allies.
The deadline is the second in a series of formal steps taken by
the European Commission, the EU executive, as part of what it calls
a "rule-of-law mechanism" triggered by what it considers attempts
by the Polish government to politicize the country's Constitutional
Tribunal and curb media freedoms.
"Despite the dialogue pursued with the Polish authorities since
the beginning of the year, the Commission considers the main issues
which threaten the rule of law in Poland have not been resolved,"
European Ccommission Vice President Frans Timmermans said when
announcing the three-month deadline to solve the crisis.
Since winning a landslide parliamentary election in October,
Poland's conservative Law and Justice government has rewritten the
rules governing the Constitutional Tribunal and stopped publishing
its rulings in the Official Journal. The government has also
scrapped the appointments to the court made by the previous
administration and installed its own judges, moves contested by the
court, the opposition, and thousands of people who repeatedly took
to the streets. The government accused its predecessor of trying to
pack the court in its favor ahead of last October's parliamentary
elections.
On Wednesday, the EU warned Poland that the country hasn't
sufficiently addressed the commission's initial concerns around
publishing and implementing judgments and swearing in judges.
Failure to meet the three-month deadline could lead to
sanctions, including the possible suspension of Poland's voting
rights. Other EU governments would need to approve the sanctions,
however, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already
vowed to veto any move against Poland.
Poland's foreign ministry criticized the EU's action as "very
premature" ahead of the entry into force of new laws on the
Constitutional Court and accused the commission of not abiding by
the EU principle of sincere cooperation with national
governments.
The EU said it was recommending that Polish authorities publish
and fully implement judgments of the constitutional tribunal,
including on the nomination of judges. The commission also advised
Poland to automatically publish all of the tribunal's future
judgments.
"If the constitutional tribunal cannot exert its function
because of intervention by the executive branch of government, or
by the legislature, then we have a problem and that's the problem
we're trying to address," said Mr. Timmermans.
Wednesday's move came after the commission in June issued a
formal opinion criticizing Poland's actions, the first formal step
in the process that could end in sanctions.
The Polish government has contested the commission's right to
correct an EU member state's behavior through such a procedure,
which it said isn't based on EU treaties.
In early July, the government rushed legislation through
parliament to change the internal rules of the court in a bid to
resolve the crisis ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
summit it hosted this month. The legislation still needs to be
signed by the country's president to enter into force.
However, opposition lawmakers said the changes were only
cosmetic and would do little to end the crisis, which they say
stems from a government agenda to remove checks and balances on its
activities.
On the sidelines of the NATO summit, U.S. President Barack Obama
expressed concern about Poland's actions, saying "more needs to be
done" to safeguard the country's democratic institutions.
Criticism came also from the Council of Europe, an
intergovernmental human-rights body, which in June released a
report saying "the prolonged paralysis" of Poland's constitutional
court "bears heavy consequences for the human-rights protection of
all Polish citizens and prevents human-rights proofing of
legislation."
The Polish government at the time complained about what it
described as "a lack of symmetry and selectivity in the
commission's report about the measures undertaken by the
government."
Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com and Natalia
Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 27, 2016 16:44 ET (20:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.