EU threatens to strip Poland of voting rights in courts stand-off
THE European Commission yesterday warned Poland it was “getting very close” to taking the unprecedented step of withdrawing Warsaw’s voting rights at EU summits, unless it stepped back from reforms that would undermine judicial independence.
Frans Timmermans, the commission’s First Vice-president, said the executive was prepared to take the so-called nuclear option of triggering Article 7 of the EU’S treaties.
The Polish government has faced growing protests in recent days after moving last week to overhaul the entire judicial system, a move that has triggered the latest in a series of clashes with Brussels.
“If these laws are applied, justice will fall under political control,” Mr Timmermans said after a meeting of all 28 EU commissioners.
They would put the “judiciary under the full political control of the government” and make “the judges serve” at the “pleasure of the political leaders”, Jean-claude Juncker’s deputy told reporters.
“These laws would have a very significant negative impact on the independence of the judiciary and would increase the systemic threat to the rule of law in Poland,” he added, before urging Warsaw to put the reforms on hold.
Article 7 allows the suspension of a member state’s rights as punishment for persistent and serious breaches of its EU legal obligations, including the independence of courts.
It must be backed by a qualified majority – a system of weighted votes based on population – of EU leaders sitting in the European Council before coming into force.
If triggered, Beata Szydło, Poland’s prime minister, whose Right-wing nationalist Law and Justice party is driving the reforms, could be excluded from decision-making in the councils of EU leaders.
Mr Timmermans was asked if the commission was prepared to deliver the embarrassing blow for the first time in history, even at the risk of Poland quitting the European Union. Speaking in the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, where Brexit negotiations continued yesterday, Mr Timmermans signalled that it would, but said no action could be taken until the reforms were finalised and approved by the Poles.
“We are not talking about details here, we are talking about the very building blocks of our society. The rule of law is not a plaything for lawyers,” he said. “I am not Nostradamus,” the former foreign minister of the Netherlands said, “but there is no way the Polish people will support a government that will advocate leaving the EU.”
The Polish parliament suspended debate overnight on a law that would give the justice minister influence over the supreme court, after Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the governing party, unleashed a diatribe against the opposition.