The warning comes as the conflict inside the court deepens. On Friday, representatives of judges elected by the current Sejm said Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, as the longest-serving judge, had taken charge of the tribunal and suspended the duties of its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański.
At a general assembly on Tuesday, judges were drawn by lot for disciplinary proceedings against the two men.
President Karol Nawrocki said the same day he would use all his prerogatives and his mandate from the public to “stop an attempt to overturn the constitutional order of the Republic of Poland”.
Simone Gianello of Milan’s Bicocca University told Polish Press Agency (PAP) he was sceptical the crisis could be resolved. A compromise would require joint action by the country’s top political leaders, he said, but the risk was of the opposite.
“I find it hard to imagine such a scenario a year before the elections”, he said. “On the contrary, the risk I see on the horizon is an even greater dramatisation of the clash”.
Gianello said he did not apportion blame “symmetrically between the parties involved”. He pointed to what he called regressive moves against the judiciary under the former United Right government, which he said had been repeatedly confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights and the EU’s Court of Justice.
He also noted an October opinion from the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which said the president should swear in judges properly elected by the Sejm “without undue delay”. Gianello said it had criticised the head of state’s approach.
Still, he cautioned against how order is restored. He said he accepted that the rule of law might have to be rebuilt in a crisis by means that could look heavy-handed, but did not accept such methods becoming routine.
“I do not agree, however, with the normalisation of certain behaviours, because it carries the risk of their future imitation or any justification of them”, he said.
Gianello said recent events were so hard to explain to non-specialists that they risked “maximum instrumental exploitation”, which could further erode the tribunal’s legitimacy.
“This is precisely what should be avoided”, he said, if the institution, long “a hostage” of specific political forces, was to regain its standing.
(jh)
Source: PAP