‘Poland is cutting last fuse on democracy’

Bloomberg

Twenty-eight years after Poland led eastern Europe’s break with communism and
its embrace of western-style democracy, the country’s human rights commissioner is sounding the alarm with a warning that the European Union’s largest eastern nation is on a road that leads back to authoritarian rule.
The latest plan by President Andrzej Duda and the ruling party to revamp the Supreme Court and a powerful judicial body would remove the last safety mechanism protecting the rule of law in Poland, said Adam Bodnar, elected in 2015 by the previous parliament as the country’s ombudsman. His voice adds to EU and US concerns over a two-year effort to subdue the judiciary, just as the drive enters what could be the final stage.
“These are the last fuses,” Bodnar said in an interview in his Warsaw office. If the planned overhaul is implemented, it will dismantle “the safety valves protecting human rights,” he said. The power grab by Poland’s right-wing populists since they gained power in 2015 has soured relations with Germany and France, while risking unprecedented EU sanctions against a member state for backsliding on democratic standards. Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law & Justice party, met to iron out differences regarding the way politicians should increase their sway over the Supreme Court and the Judicial Council, which decides judicial promotions.