The chamber voted on Thursday to appoint Patyra, a constitutional law scholar, to a nine-year term on the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s top court for reviewing whether laws comply with the constitution.
Patyra received 235 votes in favor, 184 against, with five abstentions. A total of 424 lawmakers took part in the vote, with 213 being the majority required for election.
His candidacy was put forward by the governing coalition. It had earlier received a positive recommendation from the lower house's Justice and Human Rights Committee.
The vote was needed because the term of Constitutional Tribunal judge Andrzej Zielonacki expires on June 28, state news agency PAP reported.
A rival candidate, Artur Kotowski, a professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, failed to secure enough support.
Kotowski was backed by the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), which had put his name forward for the seventh time. He received 173 votes in favor and 245 against, with six abstentions.
Patyra has been associated with Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, eastern Poland, since 1994. Since 2019, he has headed the Department of Constitutional Law at the university’s Faculty of Law and Administration.
The appointment comes amid a broader dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal, an institution that has been at the center of Poland’s long-running political battle over the rule of law.
Judges of the tribunal are elected individually by parliament for nine-year terms, but they normally take an oath before the president before taking office.
In March, MPs elected six judges to bring the tribunal back to its statutory full composition of 15.
President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of the opposition, accepted the oaths of two of them, Magdalena Bentkowska and Dariusz Szostek, but did not swear in the remaining four. His office said the situation was being analyzed because of what it described as errors in the parliamentary procedure.
Those four judges later took an oath in parliament using wording stating that they were doing so “before the president,” but Constitutional Tribunal head Bogdan Święczkowski has said he does not recognize that act as a valid oath.
The four have turned to the European Court of Human Rights, while Poland’s foreign ministry has told the court that, in the government’s view, they are Constitutional Tribunal judges.
Patyra addressed the oath issue during committee proceedings. He said the president’s role in receiving an oath should not be treated as a discretionary power.
“The president is obliged to receive the oath from judges elected by parliament,” Patyra said. He argued that the president has no right to block the procedure by treating the act of taking the oath before him as the decisive condition for becoming a Constitutional Tribunal judge.
After Thursday’s vote, Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek said the appointment was part of the government’s effort to “restore institutions for citizens.”
Asked what should happen if Patyra is not invited to the presidential palace to take the oath, Żurek said that “a judge must be independent and will decide for himself.”
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP