President blocks bills on judiciary reform amid Polish anger
POLISH President Andrzej Duda has unexpectedly vetoed constitutional judiciary reforms which sparked days of protests across the country and led to the EU threatening sanctions.
“I have decided that I will send back to Sejm [lower house of parliament], which means I will veto the bill, on the supreme court, as well as the one about the national council of the judiciary,” Mr Duda said yesterday following mass street protests by critics who said the reforms would grant political control over the judiciary.
The decision marks the first time Mr Duda has defied Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which proposed the reforms.
As Mr Duda was hand-picked by Mr Kaczynski as the party’s presidential candidate, the move is likely to have taken the nationalist government by surprise and will stall its efforts to consolidate power.
The vetoed bills proposed that the PiS would be given greater control over Poland’s supreme court and the national council of the judiciary by allowing the justice minister to appoint his own judges.
Supporters of the bills said they would bring about necessary changes to a judicial system many Poles feel is corrupt and inefficient. But Mr Duda said there was no tradition in Poland for a prosecutor general to have such large powers and that he would not agree to it.
A third bill, which Mr Duda did not veto, will allow the government to appoint its own judges in the common court.
The veto decision was praised as “courageous” by Lech Walesa, the former president, Nobel prize winner and icon of Polish democracy. The EU threatened legal action over the reforms as it warned they risked undermining legal independence. (© Daily Telegraph, London)