Polish President Andrzej Duda ratified one of three judicial reform bills on Tuesday, but his veto of two others dealt a blow to the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and threatened to sow divisions in the coalition it heads.
Amid signals from one of PiS’s junior partners that it backed the president’s stance, a senior party figure denied that the coalition was in jeopardy or that an early election might be necessary.
The law ratified by Duda allows the justice minister to hire and fire the senior judges who head ordinary courts, a measure that the PiS says is needed to speed up a system widely seen as too slow and redolent of the communist era, and to make the judiciary more accountable to the people.
But he blocked other laws that would have given the government and parliament power to replace Supreme Court judges – plans that have triggered mass protests across the country and prompted concern in Brussels and Washington.
A European Union official said Poland – the bloc’s biggest and most powerful East European member – could face legal consequences, in the form of a rare censure process, if it started dismissing judges.
“If mass firing of judges starts, then a red line is crossed where all dialogue will need to be declared as failed,” the official said.
Critics at home and abroad accuse the conservative, nationalist-minded PiS of trying to politicise the judiciary, pointing to previous moves to increase government control over state media, state prosecutors and the Constitutional Tribunal.
The issue has divided the country, plunging into one of its deepest crises since the overthrow of Communism in 1989.
