Brussels, 01/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - Representatives of the European Commission and the Council of Europe will be present simultaneously in Warsaw next week in order to continue discussions about respect for the rule of law in Poland.
European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans will meet with the Polish authorities on Tuesday 5 April. The visit “comes as part of ongoing rule of law dialogues. This is, of course, a positive sign we can pursue direct exchanges with Polish authorities on the matter before the College of Commissioners agree to come back to the matter after Easter”, said a Commission spokesperson on Friday 1 April.
In mid-January, the Commission activated the rule of law mechanism for the very first time (that was established in 2014, see EUROPE 11467). The mechanism has involved exchanges between the European institution and the Polish government, notably on reforms of the constitutional court, over a two-month period.
On Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 April, Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland will also meet Polish politicians and members of civil society. The meetings will cover Poland's relations with the Council of Europe, and the Venice Commission's opinion on the country's constitutional court and legislation on the media, according to the CoE's press department. In early March, the CoE's Venice Commission said that recent reforms of the Polish constitutional court undermined democracy, human rights and the rule of law and were acting as a brake on the court's effectiveness (see EUROPE 11510). It stresses the measures in question are the work of both the current majority at the Polish parliament and the previous one.
On Friday 1 April, Polish diplomat Marek Prawda started work as head of the European Commission's representation in Poland. Beata Szydlo's government recently removed him from his post as Poland's Permanent Representative to the European Union, a post he had held from February 2012 to March 2016. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)