The end of the political election of judges to the National Council of the Judiciary? The Sejm wants to bypass the president's veto
On Friday, the Sejm adopted a resolution on the restoration of constitutional standards for the selection of judge members of the National Council of the Judiciary. The resolution states that the Sejm, when electing judges to the National Council of the Judiciary, will take into account the results of elections made by judges in general and transparent elections.
237 MPs voted for the resolution, 199 were against and no one abstained.
During the votes, the Sejm did not accept PiS's motion to reject the resolution, but adopted amendments clarifying the content of the resolution.
Żurek: The president knows that he will not be able to block “plan B” regarding the election of judges to the National Council of the Judiciary, hence his project
The head of the Ministry of Justice, Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek, assessed that President Karol Nawrocki is aware that he will not be able to block “plan B” regarding the election of judges to the National Council of the Judiciary, which is why he presented his own project on this matter. According to Żurek, showing the president's project to the judges at this point “is intended to intimidate them.”
During Friday's press conference at the Ministry of Justice, Żurek referred to the draft bill that President Karol Nawrocki submitted last week, after he vetoed the amendment to the Act on the National Council of the Judiciary. Its aim is to, among others, “effective counteracting illegal attempts to undermine judicial nominations granted at the request of the National Council of the Judiciary due to judicial practice inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution and jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal.”
According to the head of the Ministry of Justice, adopting the president's act would mean “legal Polexit”. As he assessed, this project violates the constitutional principles of: a democratic state of law, the binding of the Republic of Poland by international law, the principle of the separation of powers, the right to a court, the right to privacy protection, freedom of association, independence and separateness of courts and tribunals, judicial independence, irremovability of judges and violation of immunity.
In Żurek's opinion, such provisions would allow the president to “take control over the entire process of electing judges to the National Council of the Judiciary.” As he emphasized, the president not only wants to influence the act of nomination, but also wants to influence the announcements on where he will take up the position.
According to the head of the Ministry of Justice, there is “some strange fear” in the Chancellery of the President, since a project is coming to light that wants to scare judges in prison. As he cited, it provides that the penalty for assessing whether a judge was appointed in accordance with the law may range from “six months to five years”.
He recalled that the president proposed a referendum on this matter. He cited that the cost of such a referendum could “reach PLN 100 million.” – Perhaps we should ask the question whether the Chancellery of the President will now cover what we have to pay from its budget. He also assessed that the presidential project was prepared in the Chancellery of the President, but probably not by the “staff of the president's people, but by people” of the former head of the Ministry of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro.
Żurek said that one of the representatives of the non-governmental organization pointed out that in the file with the justification of the presidential project, lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski is listed as the author of the justification. The minister's speech was accompanied by a slide with statements that “the presidential project was co-created by attorney Bartosz Lewandowski, a lawyer associated with Ordo Iuris, defender of, among others, Zbigniew Ziobro, Tomasz Szmydt, Łukasz Piebiak and Marcin Romanowski” and that “this is not an expert reform, but a document tailored to specific political and ideological interests.”
Żurek also presented photos from – as he said – Lewandowski's visit to the Presidential Palace and from his visit to Budapest, which, apart from Lewandowski, includes, among others, former deputy ministers of justice from the times when Zbigniew Ziobro headed the ministry – Łukasz Piebiak and Marcin Romanowski, and the leader of the informal Border Defense Movement, Robert Bąkiewicz. The head of the Ministry of Justice noted that Piebiak is “described by the media as a 'herald' in the so-called hate scandal”; he said about Romanowski that he was “pursued on arrest warrants and a European arrest warrant” – it was an investigation into irregularities in the Justice Fund, in which Romanowski was charged.
Noting that “everyone has the right to a defense lawyer, and every lawyer has the right to defend whomever he wants”, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also presented a photo of Lewandowski with Tomasz Szmydt (a former judge who fled to Minsk in May 2024 and is suspected of espionage in Poland – PAP) and others presenting – as he said – “a list of law firms recommended by the Russian embassy”. – In first place is the law firm of attorney Bartosz Lewandowski. You have to draw your own conclusions – added Żurek.
The minister also emphasized that showing the president's project on the judiciary to judges – which occurred when the amendment to the National Council of the Judiciary Act was vetoed – “is intended to intimidate judges in some way and have a chilling effect on them.” – Nothing could be further from the truth – said Żurek. He added that he had been a judge for 30 years and knew how in difficult years judges “passed the exam” and fought for the rule of law.
– We must ask ourselves why the Chancellery of the President is presenting this act at this moment – said Żurek. In his opinion, the president “knows that he is in no way able to block today 'plan B', which the judges will want to implement, to elect the judicial part of the National Council (of the Judiciary) in such a way that it cannot later be said that it was politicians who decided to elect the judges.”
Plan B concerns the formation of the judicial part of the National Council of the Judiciary after President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the amendment to the Act on the National Council of the Judiciary, which restored the principle that the election of 15 judge-members of the National Council of the Judiciary is made by the judicial community. Currently, due to the term of office ending in May, the procedure for electing candidates for 15 judicial members of the National Council of the Judiciary is in progress, in accordance with the applicable regulations dating back to the PiS government. According to them, judges-members of the National Council of the Judiciary are ultimately selected by the Sejm.
Plan B is to include in the ongoing procedure for nominating a candidate to the National Council of the Judiciary, among others: a group of 25 judges still adjudicating, the judges at their meetings selected from among themselves and nominated to the Sejm candidates whose status as judges is unquestionable. An element of this plan is the resolution adopted by MPs on Friday. In it, the Sejm declares that it will respect the recommendations of the judicial community when electing 15 judicial members of the National Council of the Judiciary.
Żurek also said that elections are being prepared in all courts, during which candidates for the National Council of the Judiciary will be selected. Their candidacies are then to be accepted by the Sejm. – We have an old, bad act on the National Council of the Judiciary, but using these provisions, judges want to select the appropriate National Council of the Judiciary from the bottom up – emphasized the head of the Ministry of Justice.
According to him, the veto on the amendment to the act on the National Council of the Judiciary is an attempt to “concrete the system”. As he said, this will result in increased chaos in the courts. He also stated that the statement from the Chancellery of the President on this matter is “completely untrue.” He emphasized that this was the first draft of the law that gave all judges active voting rights. – Saying that we segregated anyone into better and worse was simply untrue, he said.
The head of the Ministry of Justice noted that another accusation from the president was that “voting is being blocked and the National Council of the Judiciary is being concreted.” The minister emphasized that currently “the Neo-National Council of the Judiciary does not meet the constitutional requirements, because the constitution says that the National Council of the Judiciary should include representatives of all types of courts.”
– So we did it so that all these courts had their representatives in the draft act, but at the same time we gave the largest number of seats in the National Council of the Judiciary to district court judges, because there are the most of them – Żurek noted. He recalled that in the case of passive electoral law, there were seniority requirements, but – as he noted – they are present in every serious institution.
According to the minister, another “lie in this announcement” regarding the amendment is that the consequence of introducing this act could be “widespread questioning of the status of judges.” – The project also clearly referred to the second project, which is still being processed, in which we say that all court judgments issued by judges appointed in common courts were defective – noted Żurek. This is a project called the Rule of Law Act, i.e. the Act on restoring the right to an independent and impartial court established under law by regulating the effects of resolutions of the National Council of the Judiciary adopted in 2018-2025.
He added that the vetoed act guaranteed that the judgments issued by the so-called neo-judges will not be questionable.
The head of the Ministry of Justice recalled that one of the president's allegations concerned the “politicization of the National Council of the Judiciary elections” by the fact that these elections would be conducted by the National Electoral Commission. – We wonder where there is politicization in the activities of the National Electoral Commission, which are transparent, which we see in all elections taking place in Poland – noted the minister.
The amendment to the Act on the National Council of the Judiciary, vetoed by the president, provided for the election of 15 judges-members of the National Council of the Judiciary in direct and secret elections – organized by the National Electoral Commission – by all judges in Poland, and not by the Sejm as currently. Judges with at least 10 years of judicial experience and 5 years in a given court could run for the new National Council of the Judiciary, which also opened the way for some judges promoted after 2017. The change in regulations was criticized by PiS, and the government – including the Ministry of Justice – argued that the amendment would make the National Council of the Judiciary constitutional. (PAP)
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