What will the President do about the so-called Rule of Law Bill presented by Minister of Justice Waldemar Żurek? “Perhaps this veto won’t be necessary at all. I hope – and here’s an appeal to circles more reasonable than Civic Platform and probably more reasonable than the New Left, for instance to the Polish People’s Party or the Polska 2050 Party – not to go down this path of so-called ‘neorule of law,’ of brutally violating the law,” said today the Head of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, Zbigniew Bogucki.
The proposal of the so-called Rule of Law Bill, recently presented by Minister of Justice Waldemar Żurek, has been widely criticized by legal circles and described as an attempt to implement the demands of the most radical and politically engaged group of judges.
Professor Ryszard Piotrowski, a constitutional law expert, pointed out flaws in Żurek’s proposal, noting that it directly violates the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. “It violates the Constitution in many provisions. Above all, in the part where it breaches the principle of separation of powers, granting the executive branch certain prerogatives over the judiciary. But it also breaches the Constitution by violating the principle of reliability and efficiency in the functioning of public institutions,” said Professor Piotrowski.
On Friday, the President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, responding to a question about the Minister of Justice’s proposal, which Żurek calls “a compromise,” stated that “what Minister Żurek has done recently is not encouraging.”
“He brutally violates the law and the Constitution, so Minister Żurek’s proposals (…) will of course be analyzed in the Chancellery of the President, but his recent actions have not shown any willingness to be a partner for dialogue with the President of Poland. That should never have happened,” said the President. His response suggests that if the bill reaches his desk, it will likely face a veto.
“A veto might not be needed”
Today on Polsat News, Zbigniew Bogucki, Head of the Chancellery of the President, said that “a veto might not be needed at all.”
“Perhaps this veto won’t be necessary at all. I hope – and here’s an appeal to circles more reasonable than Civic Platform and probably more reasonable than the New Left, for instance to the Polish People’s Party or the Polska 2050 Party – not to go down this path of ‘neorule of law,’ of brutally violating the law, because this issue should be resolved together, by creating solutions that will ensure the rule of law, prevent chaos, guarantee the stability of rulings, the irremovability of judges, their independence and impartiality. And this bill does not achieve that – it deepens the conflict,” said the Head of the Chancellery of the President.
He called the Justice Ministry’s proposal a “pseudo-bill” and a “pseudo-rule of law bill,” which in his view “devastates the Polish legal order.”
According to Bogucki, Minister of Justice Waldemar Żurek “is behaving like an arsonist who arrives at the scene of a fire and tries to pour more oil on the flames.” Bogucki accused Żurek of “brutally trampling into matters of the rule of law and the judiciary,” and charged the ruling team with wanting to “manually decide who should issue verdicts in given cases.”