President signs Holocaust bill, drawing rare rebuke from U.S.

Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a highly controversial bill Tuesday that will ban most Holocaust accusations against Poles as well as descriptions of World War II death camps run by the Nazis as Polish — raising tensions with the United States and Israel, which criticized the measure.

An ally of the ruling rightwing Law and Justice Party who occasionally has been willing to buck the party’s will, Duda also announced that he would ask the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to review the bill to check whether it complies with Poland’s fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech. But the announcement to pursue a parallel review of the law did not stave off rebukes from key Polish allies.

Hours after the law was signed, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he was “disappointed” in Duda’s decision. “Enactment of this law adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry . ... We believe that open debate, scholarship and education are the best means of countering misleading speech,” Tillerson said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry responded to the news of Duda’s decision Tuesday, expressing hope that the constitutional review would prompt “changes and corrections.” But the law is expected to take effect before the tribunal would be able to issue any clarifications, and the independence of the judges themselves has been questioned after the Law and Justice Party passed reform plans that critics condemned as an “assault” on the judiciary.

“The constitutional tribunal in its current composition serves the goals of the ruling party . ... It is definitely not independent,” said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But referring the bill to the tribunal was probably still the best available option to the Polish president.”

By refusing to veto the bill, Duda dashed the possibility of political negotiations, which Israel and the United States had still hoped for in recent days. Instead, the bill is to take effect within the next two weeks, even as the Constitutional Tribunal reviews the legislation. The tribunal is now the only institution that could still reverse the law in its entirety or in parts.