Year after year, since in 2017 the European Commission took the unprecedented decision to activate article 7 of the Union treaty and file charges against Poland for the deterioration of the rule of law, each time the ministers of European Affairs have sat down analyze the situation, Brussels was a drama. Long faces, a sit-in by 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 relief on the faces of the European commissioners and ministers upon their arrival 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 institutional and political struggle during the that the ultra-conservative PiS 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 are going to 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 center-right parties that managed to unseat PiS in December after eight years in power, intend to amend the situation. Although the EU has never taken the procedure to the end and has not used the nuclear button of proposing to withdraw the right to vote in the Council, the deterioration of the country's democratic health has not come free for the Poles. Brussels keeps tens of millions of euros in aid frozen for violating the basic principles and values of the EU.
The process of decolonizing the justice institutions and evicting their apparatchiks from different public bodies will not be simple or quick: the judges appointed by the PiS are opposing the reforms and some of the laws prepared by Bodnar, a renowned constitutional lawyer, specify of the signature of the president, Andrzej Duda, a loyal member of the party, to come into force, so vetoes are not ruled out.
All in all, the reactions of the ministers to the Warsaw plans received “extraordinarily positive” reactions, said the Belgian foreign minister, Hadja Lahbib, on behalf of the rotating presidency of the Council. “Poland is going from being a problem child in terms of the rule of law to a champion of democracy,” celebrated the German Secretary of State for the EU, Anna Luehrmann. “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 European Commission responsible for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova. "I have a dream. And it happens during my term,” confessed the Czech liberal, who will leave office on December 1. Warsaw is even more ambitious: it aims to put an end to this dark episode in its history in the first half of the year.
To demonstrate to the EU its willingness to move quickly, the Government approved a bill on Tuesday 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 Spain. In addition, Warsaw has joined the European Anti-Fraud Prosecutor's Office and has begun to comply with the rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights.
Both Brussels and Warsaw are however aware of the difficulties. The tangle of reforms adopted by PiS since 2015 means that the new Polish Government risks violating it, 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 reverse the reforms adopted with the previous government, the process of restoring the rule of law “after so many years” must be carried out “in full respect” of the rule of law. “The Polish Government has presented an action plan that seems very solid but we are very aware of the difficulties they will have due to not having sufficient parliamentary majorities,” said the Secretary of State for the EU, Fernando Sampedro.
In the event that the Government achieves the approval of these laws in Parliament but they are then vetoed by the president, the European ministers will have to evaluate whether or not the conditions are met to close the sanctioning procedure of article 7, which to date has only been It has been activated for Poland and, in 2018, for Hungary, although in this case at the request of the European Parliament. Duda's mandate ends in 2025. In parallel with resolving the affront of Article 7, the Polish Government has proposed to act quickly to comply with the conditions set in the European regulations and be able to access 76.5 billion euros from the Cohesion Fund and 34.5 billion from the recovery and resilience fund, which the country must use no later than 2026, when the program expires.
“If Poland emerges from this procedure, it will mean that we are a stronger member state, that we will be more inclusive in how European integration progresses and that we will have more power to defend the ideas and projects that we would like to promote at the European level,” highlighted its minister. of Justice making good the slogan with which Tusk returned to the European Council table in December, Poland is back.
