MEPs on the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) began voting on Tuesday 14 July on a report by Spain’s Juan Fernando López Aguilar (S&D) on determining a clear risk of violation of the Rule of law in Poland (see EUROPE 12491/24). The result will be known on the 16th and the text will be submitted to the September plenary.
The report is extensive and covers all the violations of the Rule of law and fundamental rights that Poland has been accused of, including by the European Commission, which in December 2017 opened an Article 7 procedure against Warsaw, covering a range of fields, from the judiciary to societal issues such as anti-LGBTI decisions.
As the Chair of the LIBE Committee explained to some journalists on Tuesday afternoon, Poland, which has just narrowly re-elected President Andrzej Duda, needs to understand “the message” that “you don’t govern by majority but by law” and that every EU Member State is bound by the Rule of law and obligations.
The report divides the groups on the left of Parliament and the right, or far right like ID. During a brief exchange of views on the evening of 13 July, the French ID representative, Nicolas Bay, also considered the existence of this report to be unfounded, since, in his view, the Rule of law had not been called into question in Poland.
Poland’s Patryk Jaki (ECR), from the PiS party, for his part, got angry with the Spanish rapporteur, who, in his view, had merely accumulated erroneous facts in his report, “without verifying them”.
He accused the LIBE Chair of applying “double standards”, with the conservative politician claiming that many of the judicial reforms undertaken by the Polish government resembled those in other Member States such as Spain or Germany.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar defended himself by citing all the existing reports on the subject, whether from the Commission, the Court of Justice, the Council of Europe or the OSCE.
For the Spaniard, what the Polish government has been doing for the last few years is unprecedented in the EU. “Never has a government changed the justice system as much in 5 years” as PiS has, he reacted.
Compromise amendments
In the compromise amendments to the text put to the vote, MEPs wanted, for example, to insist on adequate funding for the Fundamental Rights and Values programme and, in particular, for adequate funding for Polish NGOs fighting government measures; the Greens/EFA group also insisted on respect for sexual and reproductive rights and sex education in schools, but also on hate speech and violence against women. Other amendments relate to data protection.
MEPs (GUE/NGL) also stress the weaknesses of the EU Council’s work on this Article 7, which has not led to “structured” work, according to them. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)