Poland is ready to apply for most of its €111 billion in payments owed by the European Union. The cash was blocked by the European Commission amid allegations at the time that the Law and Justice (PiS) government was undermining judicial independence.
Whereas PiS faced various sanctions on the pretext of ‘rule of law’ violations, its governing successor in parliament—a left-liberal coalition led by arch-Eurocrat Donald Tusk—now seems primed to receive the funding. According to Warsaw, the Commission has informally agreed that the new Tusk-led liberal government has implemented the last remaining judicial reforms needed for the unblocking of some €76 billion worth of cohesion funds from the 2021-2027 budget, which will be gradually released in the months ahead.
“We have confirmation from the European Commission—Poland meets the last three conditions necessary for the full mobilization of structural funds—€76 billion for the implementation of programs until 2027,” Funds and Regional Policy Minister Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nalęcz announced Friday evening on social media.
On Saturday, the minister went on to explain in an interview that the country can expect the first tranche to arrive in two or three months and that Poland has already submitted the request for an initial payment of €6.9 billion.
However, Pełczyńska-Nalęcz also admitted that there was no official greenlight from Brussels, merely a “self-assessment” from Warsaw which still has to be reviewed and approved by the Commission.
“There is a green light so that we can finally submit documents for the structural funds—this is called a self-assessment,” she said, adding that now Poland has to wait for the Commission’s review to come back positive, and only then start applying for further funds. “This is another two-three months plus another 1.5 months.”
When asked by Reuters, the Commission confirmed that Poland submitted its self-assessment believing that it has fulfilled all the relevant criteria, but maintained that its own parallel assessment will only be published sometime in the next three months.
To date, the only thing that’s certain is the Polish government’s confidence that the funds will be unblocked without any actual confirmation. Nonetheless, payments will most probably start rolling in as soon as possible—not because the reforms are truly making the Polish judiciary independent and objective, but simply because Tusk’s government is ideologically aligned with the Brussels mainstream while PiS represented the opposite.
If anything, judicial independence and the rule of law have gone downhill since Tusk’s liberal coalition took power in Warsaw. Immediately after being sworn in, the government began to purge conservatives (and anyone associated with PiS) from the media, administration, and courts, going so far as jailing two former ministers on clearly politically motivated charges that date back to 2007.
While the hostile and unlawful takeover of key Polish institutions—reminiscent of communist times—is actively undermining democracy itself, every legal body that speaks out against it is being dismissed as plants of the previous regime and declared an enemy, to be dealt with shortly.
Meanwhile, Brussels willfully enables all this abuse by keeping silent and endorsing further “reforms” that entail the removal of all remaining judicial personnel who were appointed under the previous government.
For instance, to unblock the remaining €35 billion of frozen pandemic recovery funds, Warsaw would need to make structural reforms to the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ), the body that appoints new judges, as the Commission believes its members are too closely aligned with PiS.
The complete overhaul of the NCJ can be vetoed by President Duda, who remains the conservatives’ most powerful remaining institutional ally. Tusk’s Civic Alliance doesn’t have the parliamentary strength to bypass him. This helps motivate the new justice minister, Adam Bodnar, to gradually replace PiS-friendly legal personnel individually.
Nothing says ‘rule of law’ better than doing exactly what you’ve been accusing the other party (and more). The Eurocrats actively applauding this situation have an already hypocritical record of pursuing this “lawfare” strategy with the Hungarian government. That the complete takeover of the Polish courts lacks democratic legitimacy doesn’t bother the new government—nor the European Commission, it seems.
“Politically, we have it agreed with the Commission that some things will be addressed without new laws,” a senior government official told Reuters, while Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders also said that Brussels was open to different solutions if Duda were to consistently use his veto.
It appears that Poland will soon be able to apply for the entirety of the frozen funds one way or the other, simply because the Commission wants to reward a government that’s aligned with its liberal agenda. While the money is good news for the Polish people, the decision to unblock it has nothing to do with the independence of the courts, and ideological rule-of-law ‘lawfare’ continues to be business as usual for the European Union.
