Poland’s right-wing government on Thursday ramped up its verbal attacks against the country’s constitutional court, with Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski saying the court’s president “increasingly reminds me of an Iranian ayatollah.”
Waszczykowski, a former Polish ambassador to Iran, said in a Thursday radio interview that the Constitutional Tribunal smacked of Iran’s religious rulers, who place themselves above democratic institutions. In Iran, “it’s not the law as determined by democratically elected parliaments, governments, presidents which is the dominating law, but the interpretation of that law through jurisprudence,” he said.
Waszczykowski was reacting to Wednesday’s ruling by the tribunal that a series of profound changes to the law that govern its operations and were rushed through parliament in December violate the country’s constitution. The new majority Law and Justice party (PiS) government refused to accept the court’s decision.
The tribunal’s ruling is a response to the changes brought by the government’s push to weaken the powers of the judiciary to review legislation. The moves have galvanized domestic opposition and spurred international concern about rule of law and democracy in the EU’s largest eastern state.
In point after point of Wednesday’s verdict, Andrzej Rzepliński, the tribunal’s president, found that the changes “in making it impossible for a constitutional body like the Constitutional Tribunal to properly function, as well as interfering in its independence and separation from other branches, violated the principles of a law-bound state.”
The court found that the rushed way the law was adopted violated constitutional procedure, and that the rule changes undercut the court’s constitutionally-protected independence.
The government contested the tribunal’s ability to take up the case, arguing it was doing so in violation of those same rule changes it was examining. Government representatives refused to appear at a hearing Tuesday to defend the laws.
“The decision doesn’t have any legal force and is not legally binding,” Zbigniew Ziobro, the justice minister, said after the tribunal’s verdict.
Government resistance
Even before the ruling, Beata Szydło, the prime minister, said, “It is hard to recognize that the hearing by the tribunal will be binding as it is not taking place according to the rules as determined by the current law.”
A deputy justice minister even called the hearing a simple meeting of judges over “espresso and cakes” with no legal significance.
The government refused to publish the verdict — a necessary step in the normal legal procedure for tribunal rulings to make them binding. That prompted a group of protesters to project the decision on the outside wall of the prime minister’s office Wednesday night.
Ryszard Petru, leader of the Modern opposition party, tweeted, “Not carrying out the verdict of the [Constitutional Tribunal] will mean the most serious constitutional crisis in Poland.”
The changes to the court’s rules were raced through the Sejm, or parliament, in late-night sessions in December. They force the tribunal to take cases in chronological order, which ends the court’s ability to choose more significant cases, set a quorum for important cases (13 of the 15-judge tribunal), and change the definition of a majority needed for a verdict to two-thirds from half.
The government argued the steps are aimed at improving the court’s functioning and removing political bias. The government’s critics accuse it of trying to hobble a court that had acted to halt some of the actions taken by PiS during its previous stint in government from 2005 to 2007.
A larger battle
The changes follow a battle over who gets to sit on the tribunal. The new parliament, elected in October, voted in three judges — sworn in by President Andrzej Duda — instead of accepting three judges elected by the outgoing legislature. That means the court now only has 12 generally recognized judges, falling below the quorum in the new procedural rules.
Rzepliński refused to accept that the new rules are already in force. If they were, they would make it almost impossible for the tribunal to rule on their constitutionality. If the tribunal followed the new procedure, it should first rule on older cases, and it would be unable to act if it doesn’t have quorum.
A draft of the Commission’s upcoming report criticized most of the government’s recent steps, finding they endanger rule of law, democracy and human rights.
With the opposition parties weak and without the seats in the Sejm to block the PiS majority from passing legislation at will, opponents have resorted to large, anti-government street protests. Public support for Law and Justice, however, oscillates around a third of the electorate, according to recent surveys, far above the opposition.
The issue is causing growing domestic and international problems for the government, which seems set on confrontation. In an interview earlier this week with Radio Nadzieja, a regional religious station, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and the country’s most powerful politician, said, “We won’t fulfill commands that would lead to the collapse of our whole program.” He went on to blame Rzepliński for the crisis.
The next challenge for the government takes place on Friday, during a meeting of the Venice Commission, a body of the Council of Europe, which is due to release a report assessing the situation around the Constitutional Tribunal. A draft of its report leaked last week criticized most of the government’s recent steps, finding they endanger rule of law, democracy and human rights.
Waszczykowski said he plans to “knock down” accusations that legal changes to the court threaten democracy.
The Venice report is likely to influence the European Commission, which in January launched an unprecedented probe into Poland’s judicial reforms.
This article has been updated with additional quotes from the foreign minister.