Polish President refuses to sign judicial reform laws
Polish President Andrzej Duda sent the two laws on judicial reform which he had vetoed to the Sejm (the lower house of parliament) to be modified, as reported by the Polish president’s press service. The laws had caused massive protests in Poland.
“The President… refused to sign the law from 12 July 2017 to introduce changes to the law on the National Judicial Council, as well as several other laws, and sent it to the Sejm for reconsideration,” the report states.
In another report, the press service clarified that this also included the law on the Supreme Court.
Earlier Duda vetoed two laws – the law on the Supreme Court and the law on the National Judicial Council, because the laws create a precedent of extreme power for the Prosecutor General (simultaneously Poland’s Minister of Justice) over courts, and have the public divided. Many representatives of the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) have not concealed their disappointment in the president’s decision, emphasizing that by doing so he is delaying the judicial reform planned by the authorities.
As reported earlier yesterday, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło said that the Polish government would continue to push for the adoption of judicial reform.
For more than two weeks there have been protests in Poland against the government’s plans to change the country’s judicial system. PiS claims that the changes are intended to remedy the judicial system from its pathology. The opposition, however, insists that the authorities are trying to make the judicial system subordinate to them.