EU investigates Polish government's controversial new laws

Executive body is formally inspecting legislation to establish whether it has breached EU democratic standards

                                                        European commission vice-president Frans Timmermans. 

The European Union has launched an unprecedented inquiry into whether Poland’s new nationalist government has breached EU democratic standards in taking more control of the judiciary and public media.

“Today we have decided that the commission will carry out a preliminary assessment of this matter under the Rule of Law Framework,” EU commission vice-president Frans Timmermans told a news conference after an unusually lengthy weekly meeting of the EU’s executive body in Brussels.

EU officials had previously indicated that the commission might prefer to hold off for now on launching formal procedure that was set up two years ago in response to criticism that it had done too little to curb authoritarian moves by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban over the past several years.

However, Timmermans, who in his previous role as a centre-left Dutch foreign minister was one of the architects of the new Rule of Law Framework, insisted and said it would allow for a “structured dialogue” with Warsaw. He and the commission would review Polish responses by mid-March, after working with the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights watchdog.

A Polish government spokesman played down the launch of the process, describing it as “standard procedure”.

Critics accuse Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo’s Law and Justice party, of rolling back judicial independence and freedom of speech.

Supporters say the government is entitled to uphold Catholic and national values and show its independence from Brussels.

Since its election in October, the government has ignored existing rules to pack the constitutional court with its appointees and changed the court’s voting system to curb its ability to censure legislation. It has also passed a law giving it direct control over the appointment of public media chiefs.