The President’s Chancellery, and in particular the legal services, will closely monitor the draft amendment to the Constitutional Court law on reducing the full composition of the tribunal, Presidential Minister Małgorzata Paprocka said on Polish Radio program three.
According to the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Jarosław Sellin, who is also a guest on the Saturday broadcast “Breakfast in Trójka” on the third program of Polish Radio, the Constitutional Tribunal has problems and it is the duty of the authorities to remedy this situation.
On Thursday, PiS deputies in the Sejm submitted a draft amendment to the law on organization and procedure to the Constitutional Court. The aim of the project is – according to the authors – “to improve the work of the Tribunal”. The proposed provisions aim to reduce the minimum number of judges of the General Assembly and the full composition of the Constitutional Tribunal to nine judges. The amended provisions apply to proceedings initiated and not completed before the date of entry into force of the amendment.
As KPRP minister Małgorzata Paprocka emphasized on Saturday, from the president’s point of view, the most important thing is that “first – the Tribunal must work, and second – that there are no legal grounds to overturn the decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal , because the Constitutional Tribunal is the only body in the state that can declare compliance with the constitution of laws.” “Nobody else can. The president mainly looks at the matter from this perspective. As for the project itself, it is a project that only appeared on the Sejm’s website the day before yesterday. The first reading has not even taken place yet.
Paprocka assured that “the President’s Chancellery, and in particular the legal services, will monitor the project very closely”.
Also how this bill will be processed and whether it will eventually become a law at all. However, at the moment there is no question of a decision by the president on this matter
– she said.
Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Jarosław Sellin pointed out that “it is the duty of the legislature to react when it sees that an important organ of the Polish state is not working.”
I don’t want to judge how the internal situation is there. (…) Let’s look at it realistically: there is a stalemate and because of this this important organ of the Polish state has operational problems. Therefore, it is the duty of the legislator to rectify this situation so that this body works, because it is necessary. His statements are simply necessary. That is the idea behind this initiative of the Members of the European Parliament
he noticed.
Commission work
On Saturday, Marek Ast, chair of the Justice and Human Rights Committee of the Sejm, told the PAP that at the next session of the Sejm on May 24-26 this year, the committee will begin work on the draft amendment to complete the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal. year. When asked about the expected length of the bill, he replied that “it’s not a long project,” so the whole thing shouldn’t take more than “one sitting.”
The Constitutional Tribunal has set the date of the hearing on the amendment of the Supreme Court law for May 30. The President’s request in this case, submitted under the preventive scrutiny procedure, will be considered by the Full Court Tribunal, chaired by President Julia Przyłębska. At present, an assembly of at least 11 judges of the Constitutional Court is required to conduct a full court hearing. However, a dispute has been going on for months in the Constitutional Tribunal over President Przyłębska’s term of office, which has prevented the Tribunal from meeting fully recently.
The ongoing dispute at the Constitutional Court is related to the fact that according to some lawyers, including former and current judges of the Constitutional Court, Przyłębska’s term of office as President of the Constitutional Court expired after six years, i.e. on December 20, 2022, and at the same time she no possibility to reapply for this position. According to Przyłębska herself, as well as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and some experts, her term of office will expire in December 2024 – with the end of Przyłębska’s term as judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.
In early January, six judges of the Constitutional Tribunal, including Vice President Mariusz Muszyński, sent a letter to Julia Przyłębska and the President demanding that she convene the General Assembly of Judges of the Constitutional Tribunal and select candidates from among them the President appoint a new president.
At the beginning of March, the press service of the Constitutional Tribunal reported that President Przyłębska had convened the General Assembly of Tribunal judges, which “passed by an absolute majority, in the presence of two-thirds of the Tribunal judges, a resolution stating that there was no reason to convene a meeting to select candidates for president of the tribunal.”
At the beginning of April, the Constitutional Tribunal received a letter from five judges of the Constitutional Tribunal in which they indicated their willingness to proceed with the president’s motion on the Supreme Court Act, but indicated in the letter that all actions of Przyłębska, attributed to the President of the Constitutional Tribunal, are ineffective and contrary to applicable law. Five judges also called for the convening of the General Assembly of the Constitutional Court and the election of a new president. Referring to this letter, Judge Jarosław Wyrembak of the Constitutional Tribunal stated that it is part of a series of actions that seriously threaten Poland’s raison d’être.
READ ALSO: Prime Minister Morawiecki scores the opposition: During the rule of PO and PSL, nobody cared that the full composition of the Constitutional Tribunal consisted of 9 people
mly/PAP
Source: wPolityce