WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling nationalists proposed legislation on Friday aiming to ease a dispute with the European Union over judiciary independence and unlock access to EU funds.
Last October, the EU’s top court ruled Poland must pay one million euros ($1.13 million) a day in fines for maintaining a disciplinary chamber for judges that it says is not independent and breaches EU law.
The head of the European Commission has said that Poland will have to undo its disciplinary system for judges to unlock access to billions of euros of aid.
Under the proposal by a group of Law and Justice (PiS) lawmakers, the Disciplinary Chamber would remain, but only as a panel for prosecutors, advocates and other legal professions.
Disciplinary proceedings against judges would be heard by three or seven Supreme Court judges appointed by draw to a particular case, the bill says.
President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the ruling party, submitted a separate proposal last week to try to ease the dispute over the judiciary. It was not yet clear when either of the two bills will be debated in parliament, or if the new proposal had the approval of the government as a whole.
The bill proposed by the PiS lawmakers also says a judge may not be disciplined for issuing a particular verdict, unless “the decision was issued as a result of serious and utterly unforgivable behaviour of the judge”.
“The proposed bill enacts all recommendations of the CJEU,” the bill’s rationale reads, referring to the EU’s top court.
Critics say neither of the bills touches on the fundamental problem of Poland’s judicial reform – the politicised appointment of judges under new PiS rules.
“So this is just a great mystification, which is aimed at getting (EU) money,” said Bartlomiej Przymusinski, a judge and spokesman for the Iustitia judges association.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Frances Kerry)
