By Joanna Berendt
New York Times
WARSAW, Poland >> A political crisis in Poland entered a new and dangerous phase on Wednesday, as the country’s Constitutional Tribunal struck down a new law limiting its powers. The nation’s right-wing government, which adopted the law in December, said it would ignore the court’s ruling.
The legal showdown is the latest manifestation of a rightward lurch that began after the conservative Law and Justice Party swept to power in elections in October.
The government is facing growing pressure from the European Union and the United States to respect the decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal, the only court empowered to review national laws. In January, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, opened an unprecedented inquiry into whether the government had violated democratic norms, a condition of membership in the 28-nation bloc.
Poland, the sixth-largest economy in the European Union, is a major net recipient of economic development aid. It is also a member of NATO and an American ally against an increasingly belligerent Russia.
In some 20 cities across the country in the past two months, democratic activists have staged huge demonstrations against the government, which has also cracked down on the news media.
But so far the government has remained defiant. Even before the court issued its latest ruling, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo had said her government would not abide by it.
The constitutional crisis began in October. Sensing it was going to lose the elections, the previous party in power, Civic Platform, appointed five judges to the court, including two to fill terms that were not due to expire until after the election. The president refused to swear them in.
Upon winning power, the Law and Justice Party appointed five judges of its own choosing, who were promptly sworn in. In December, however, the tribunal ruled that the old government had properly appointed three of the five judges it tried to install; the president has refused to seat them.
Parliament then passed a law reorganizing the court, requiring a two-thirds majority for any decision to be binding, instead of a simple majority, and requiring that 13 of the 15 judges hear a given case, instead of nine. The decision announced on Wednesday was heard by only 12 judges, and the government argues it is therefore not valid.
“This situation — described by the media as paralysis, which unfortunately is not far from the truth — means that fundamental constitutional principles have been abused,” Judge Stanislaw Biernat, a member of the tribunal, said at the court on Wednesday.
Biernat said that the Law and Justice party — the first party since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 to hold an absolute majority in Parliament — had abused “the rule of law, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary and the protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals.”
The court also rejected the new two-thirds requirement as unconstitutional.
The constitution requires that the government publish all rulings by the Constitutional Tribunal immediately in the official Journal of Laws. The justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, said the prime minister would do no such thing.
Ziobro said that the court appeared to have made up its mind before it even heard the case on Tuesday.
“This whole thing could have been a put-up job,” he said. “It’s outrageous. The judges don’t want to reach a compromise.”
The constitution does not specify what should happen if a sitting government ignores a ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal.
“This will lead to a complete anarchy in our country,” Eugeniusz Klopotek, of the opposition Polish People’s Party, said. “Social tensions will escalate. I can already feel it.”
If the European Union finds that Poland has violated democratic norms, it could strip the country of its voting rights, though it is not clear whether officials in Brussels would be willing to go that far.
© 2016 The New York Times Company
