Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Friday sounded as if they belonged to opposing camps, so opposed to their assessment of a draft law that the Sejm has adopted.

It is about an amendment to the law on the Supreme Court, which is intended to give Poland access to around 35.4 billion euros from the EU's Corona recovery fund.

So far, the EU Commission has blocked the disbursement of the funds because Poland has not yet taken steps to restore the rule of law.

Reinhard Veser

Editor in Politics.

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The law on the Supreme Court, which is now up for a vote, was introduced by MPs from the national-conservative ruling party PiS in December after the Polish government and the Commission had agreed on its essential content.

However, Brussels leaves open whether all the conditions for the payment of the money have really been met.

A spokesman for the EU Commission spoke on Friday only of an "important step" towards fulfilling Poland's obligations.

Ziobro's party votes against the coalition partner

Morawiecki was still satisfied after the vote on Friday.

Although the law is a difficult compromise, it is primarily about ending the dispute with Brussels: "We want to end the dispute in the West, because the real enemy is in the East," he said.

Ziobro, on the other hand, announced that his party would do everything possible to prevent the law, because "a policy under the dictates of Brussels or Berlin" would end badly for Poland.

The money from the reconstruction plan is an expensive loan, Ziobro claimed.

In reality, Poland should receive two-thirds of the sum as a grant and one-third as a loan.

Because the twenty MPs from Ziobro's Solidarna Polska party voted against the law, the government did not have its own majority in favor of it.

The other members of the PiS parliamentary group, to which Ziobro's followers actually belong, voted for the law in a disciplined manner, but Morawiecki owed its success to the abstention of most of the opposition.

For the time being, however, the split in the government camp will not lead to an end to the alliance between Solidarna Polska and PiS.

Neither Morawiecki nor Ziobro want to risk the fall of the government before the parliamentary elections in autumn.

In the words of the EU-hostile Minister of Justice, it sounded like this on Friday: “We do not intend to hand over power to Donald Tusk and this horde of German collaborators who are already dictating an order here that is no longer dictated by Brussels, but directly by Berlin want to introduce.”

The bill doesn't address all of the problems

Former Prime Minister and EU Council President Tusk, as chairman of the largest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Civic Platform, had signaled to the government in the middle of the week that the opposition would not block the law.

The leaders of the opposition parties have announced that they will do everything to ensure that the EU funds come to Poland.

But they are in a difficult position because leading Polish lawyers also consider the law that has now been presented to be unconstitutional.

In addition, it does not affect one of the PiS's levers for exerting political influence on the judiciary – the composition of the state judiciary council responsible for appointing judges.

After PiS rejected all opposition amendments intended to address these shortcomings, government opponents are divided on how to proceed.

Part of the opposition voted against the law on Friday, which is now going to the Senate.

The opposition parties have already announced that they will make the necessary changes there with their majority.

After that, the Sejm will have to consider the law again – and the opposition will again have to decide whether to let what they see as a flawed law go through or risk being blamed for the lack of much-needed EU funds.

Even if the next step is to adopt the law in the Sejm, it is still unclear whether President Andrzej Duda will then sign it.

He already threatened to veto the law in December because he sees this as restricting his constitutional powers when it comes to appointing judges.

The law is intended to draw a line under the history of the disciplinary chamber at the Supreme Court, created by the PiS and staffed only by partisans, which acted against unpopular judges in such a way that the European Court of Justice considered its existence to be incompatible with judicial independence.

In the future, the Supreme Administrative Court will be responsible for misconduct by judges.

However, according to numerous lawyers – including the President of this court – this is contrary to the Constitution.