Year after year, since in 2017 the European Commission took the unprecedented decision to activate Article 7 of the Treaty of the Union and prosecute Poland for the deterioration of the rule of law, every time the Ministers of European Affairs s ‘they sat down to analyze the situation, Brussels was a drama. Long faces, non-appearances of the Polish minister on duty, frustration, accusations of inaction from the European Parliament… Yesterday the atmosphere was radically different. Gathered at the request of Warsaw, the relieved faces of the commissioners and ministers when they arrived at the General Affairs Council said it all: the EU and Poland see the light at the end of the tunnel after six years of tug-of-war institutional and political during which the PiS ultra-conservative governments built a justice system that is nothing more than an extension of the executive power, according to the analyzes of the European Commission.
“We will do everything in our power to restore the rule of law in Poland”, promised the Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, who yesterday presented the action plan with which the Government of Donald Tusk, a coalition of centre-right parties that in December ousted the PiS after eight years in power, aims to remedy the situation. Although the EU has never taken the procedure to the end and has not used the nuclear button in case it was proposed to withdraw the right to vote in the Council, the deterioration of the country’s democratic health has not left Frank to the Poles. Brussels keeps tens of millions of euros in frozen aid for violating the EU’s basic principles and values.
The process of decolonizing the justice institutions and evicting their apparatchiks from various public bodies will not be simple or quick: the judges appointed by the PiS are opposing the reforms and some of the laws being prepared by Bodnar, a prestigious constitutional lawyer, and they need the signature of the president, Andrzej Duda, a party stalwart, to take effect, so vetoes are not ruled out.
All in all, the reactions of the ministers to the plans in Warsaw received “extraordinarily positive” reactions, assured the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, Hadja Lahbib, on behalf of the rotating presidency of the Council. “After six years of discussions and debates within the framework of Article 7, this is the first positive step that can lead to its closure,” declared the vice president of the committee responsible for Values ??and Transparency, Vera Jourova. “I have a dream. And it happens during my mandate”, revealed the Czech liberal, who will leave the position on December 1. Warsaw is even more ambitious: it aspires to archive this dark episode of its history during the first half of the year.
To demonstrate its willingness to move forward quickly, the Polish Government yesterday approved a bill to reform the system of electing judges so that they are appointed by their peers and not by political power, in line with what Brussels he also claims them in Spain. In addition, Warsaw has joined the European Prosecutor’s Office against Fraud and has begun to comply with the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights.
Both Brussels and Warsaw are aware of the difficulties. The mess of reforms adopted by PiS since 2015 means that the new Polish Government runs the risk of violating them, in its mission to restore the rule of law. The European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, has warned that “there is much to do” and that it will not be enough to overturn the reforms adopted by the previous government. “The Polish Government has presented an action plan that seems very solid, but we are very aware of the difficulties they will have because they do not have a sufficient parliamentary majority”, pointed out the Secretary of State for the EU, Fernando Sampedro.
In the event that the Government obtains the approval of these laws in Parliament but they are then vetoed by the President, the European ministers will have to assess whether the conditions are met to close the sanctioning procedure of Article 7 or not, which until now it has only been activated for Poland and, in 2018, for Hungary, although in this case at the behest of the Eurochamber. Duda’s mandate ends in 2025. In parallel to solving the issue of Article 7, the Polish Government has proposed to act quickly to fulfill the conditions set in the European regulations and to be able to access 76.5 billion d euros from the cohesion fund and 34,500 million from the recovery and resilience fund, which the country must use throughout 2026, when the program expires.
