The European Commission is still not ready, in response to the repeated infringements of the rule of law in Poland, to take the step of triggering the process (article 7 of the Treaty of EU) which could ultimately lead to stripping the country of its voting rights at the Council of the EU.
Instead, it has decided to go no further than to send Warsaw more recommendations on the situation of the rule of law and its reforms of the Constitutional Court.
Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the Commission, announced the decision reached by the College, explaining that the Polish authorities had not yet responded to all of the concerns raised on 27 July in the first set of recommendations sent by the Commission and that further issues had come to light since then.
The European official still wants to give Poland time for the final outstanding issues to be resolved, as the European Commission's aim is to avoid the article 7 procedure, European source explained.
The President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, asked for the matter of the rule of law in Poland to be discussed in the College, Commission spokesperson Mina Andreeva announced on Monday, partly due to the events of the weekend.
On Wednesday, however, during the discussions in the College, this weekend's wave of demonstrations was not mentioned, Timmermans said. He explained that the Commissioners had focused in particular on the Constitutional Court and the 'rule of law' mechanism, but stressed that they are not blind and could see very clearly that the debate has become very heated within society. People are afraid of losing their freedom, but this was not the subject for this morning, Timmermans said, promising that the dossier would not be dropped and that article 7 of the Treaty would not be excluded from the possible actions to be taken.
The Polish authorities now once again have two months to respond to a series of demands from the institution: in particular, they must fully implement the judgements of the Constitutional Court of December 2015, which stipulated that three legally elected judges must take up position. The publication of all of the judgements of the Constitutional Court and the guarantee that this Court can effectively verify that laws are constitutional are also among the recommendations. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)