Why Donald Tusk’s withdrawal of his signature could be damaging

Donald Tusk’s withdrawal from the decision that so outraged the judges who contested the reforms carried out by PiS and Zbigniew Ziobro ultimately shows how deep the division in the judicial community is. The room for compromise on this issue – it seems – is practically non-existent, and the only solution acceptable to judges without the prefix “neo” is the complete capitulation of the other side, the withdrawal of the reforms in a manner equally ruthless as PiS has carried them out, and forcing the neo-judges to public penance, which constitutes an “active repentance” expressed by those promoted under the rule of the neo-KRS. Even the Prime Minister’s explanation that the referendum was caused by a mistake was not enough – it was necessary to find a way to turn back the clock. And so it happened.

The reform of the justice system implemented by Donald Tusk’s government risks the same original sin as the PiS reforms

The problem is that the reform of the justice system carried out under these conditions will be burdened with the original sin of the PiS reforms, that is, it will be a form of dictatorship without any consideration for the other side of the political dispute. In the short term – assuming that the candidate of the coalition currently in power wins the presidential election – this will naturally allow us to restore the situation before the politicization of the National Council of the Judiciary and the subordination of a large part of the Supreme Court to PiS… but in the medium term, and certainly in the long term, the durability of these changes will be questionable.

This is because the Law and Justice and the part of the judicial community that supported the changes brought about by this party will find themselves in the positions that have been occupied by members of the Polish Judges’ Association “Iustitia” or the “Free Courts” initiative in recent years. In other words, they will challenge the reform not in its individual elements, but as a whole, as – in their view – an attempt to take over the judiciary from the other side. This means that if PiS returns to power, it will not feel bound by the new rules of the game and will reintroduce its own order in the courts.

This, in turn, leads us to a situation where the conflict over the judiciary and the rule of law could last for many terms of the Sejm, and the judicial system would be in a permanent state of crisis. To the detriment of us all.