Polish PM vows to push on with court revamp after veto

Bloomberg

Poland’s prime minister vowed to redouble efforts to clamp down on “unaccountable” judges after the president vetoed parts of a judicial overhaul that touched off debate in the European Union over how to confront members who flout democratic values.
In a blow to the Law & Justice party that backed his presidency, Andrzej Duda rejected bills to replace Supreme Court judges and revamp the Judicial Council that makes key personnel decisions. Tens of thousands of Poles had protested nationwide for eight days in defense of court independence, while the EU threatened Poland, the bloc’s largest beneficiary of development funds, with sanctions.
“The veto has been treated as an encouragement for those who fight to keep this unjust system in place,” Premier Beata Szydlo said late Monday in a televised statement that was broadcast at the same time as a speech by Duda. “In the elections, Poles trusted Law & Justice, and we fulfill our promises.”
The partial veto—Duda signed into law a bill giving the justice minister the right to nominate local-court heads—erects at least a temporary obstacle for Law & Justice. Since taking power in 2015, the party has challenged the EU’s democratic principles and sparked warnings about a drift toward authoritarian rule. The US State Department had criticized the judiciary legislation, with Senator John McCain on Saturday calling it “one step back for democracy.”
In a rare visual sign of commitment to the EU, Szydlo gave her televised speech on Monday evening while in front of both Polish red-and-white flags and the bloc’s blue-and-gold emblem, which was absent from a number of the premier’s previous addresses. She said her government, which has vowed to take the nation of 38 million people out of “mainstream Europe” and return it to its conservative Catholic roots, wouldn’t “submit to pressure” to back off and Duda’s rejection of the laws had only slowed necessary changes.