Poland will stop making accommodations to EU demands regarding its judicial reforms.
According to Politico,
Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński is vowing that his government will take no further steps to meet the European Commission’s rule of law demands to unlock €35 billion in grants and loans from the EU pandemic relief program.
Kaczyński, who served as deputy prime minister from 2020 until June this year, accused the European Commission of not fulfilling its part of an agreement where the Polish government would roll back some of its criticized judicial reforms in return for the pandemic-related funds. However, reports Politico, while the Polish parliament has passed legislation to meet demands from Brussels, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen believes “those measures have not gone far enough.”
In February, President Andrzej Duda announced that Poland would meet Brussels demands regarding
the disciplinary chamber for judges that is at the heart of Warsaw’s ongoing rule-of-law dispute with the European Union.
Despite this, the EU did not release the pandemic funds designated for Poland.
Relations between Brussels and Warsaw have been strained for some time. On August 5th, Catholic World Report (CWR) reported:
The European Commission’s 2022 Rule of Law report has once again singled out Poland and Hungary, accusing both countries of not addressing “serious concerns,” including breaches in their judiciary and media systems.
The governments of Poland and Hungary defend their positions, the CWR explains, by pointing to attacks “from progressive forces in the EU leadership” who want them to accommodate demands from Brussels “relating to life, gender, LGBT issues, and immigration.”
