NEWS

19/09/2025

12:56

"We are dealing with a situation where the law simply ceases to function." Kaczyński on "attempts to intimidate judges"

Michał Olech

- Attempts to intimidate judges, and intimidation using methods that can truly cause concern, attempts to ensure that judges appointed by the president, even if the CJEU ruled that the appointment, even if there were any prior errors, which there were not, would nevertheless validate those errors and the appointment would be valid and indisputable. Finally, undertakings aimed at bringing people into the judiciary who are either retired or are assessors, and thus filling a very large number, currently 2000, of vacancies. This is simply about creating a corps of people who, either out of their own conviction, especially I am referring to the older ones, or due to the uncertainty of their situation, because an assessorship lasts 4 years, after which one either becomes a judge or not, will simply be very compliant - stated Jarosław Kaczyński at a press conference.

- All these actions, to some extent, resemble what happened in Polish judiciary after 1945. We are dealing with a situation where the law simply ceases to function. One can say that although the foundation of law is the Constitution, the entire legal system is based on the Constitution, this system of connections within the legal system that creates it, has its culmination and simultaneously its source in the Constitution, yet the Constitution itself is ceasing to be an effectively binding act. We are dealing with a process of "odwyknienie" (de-habituation/detachment from law), as lawyers call it in this Polish version, and this is a process that leads to the creation of a constitutional vacuum, a void, so the matter is extremely serious - he continued.

- Poland has effectively ceased to be a state governed by the rule of law from the very first actions of this government and declarations, especially from Prime Minister Tusk, but now this is moving to a new level, a level of complete questioning of the principles that apply in every state, not only democratic, but in a simply civilized state - emphasized the PiS leader.
 


Michał Olech