Rights watchdog tells Poland’s new govt to ‘slow down’
Members of the opposition party Civic Platform hold up copies of Poland’s constitution to protest a move by the new right-wing government to put five of its supporters on the Constitutional Tribunal, in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015. AP File Photo
WARSAW, Poland—A European human rights watchdog on Friday urged Poland’s new right-wing government to “slow down” legislative changes, slammed both at home and abroad as unconstitutional and undemocratic.
“Slow down and consult civil society,” Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, told journalists in the capital Warsaw.
He added that controversial reforms pushed through parliament by the Law and Justice (PiS) government had effectively “paralysed” the constitutional court, the top judicial body in EU member Poland.
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“The paralysis of the Constitutional Tribunal bears heavy consequences for human rights of all Polish citizens,” Muiznieks said.
“The Polish authorities must find a way out of this situation by fully abiding by the rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal and the opinion to be adopted by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.”
This commission’s legal experts on Monday began a fact-finding mission in Poland to determine if the PiS has violated the constitution and democracy rules.
Muiznieks on Friday outlined the preliminary results of his own four-day fact-finding mission into a string of controversial reforms, including ones that tightened the PiS’s grip on state media after the party scored a parliamentary majority in October elections.
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“Placing public service media under direct government control… contradicts Council of Europe standards which notably require that public service media remain independent of economic or political interference,” Muiznieks warned.
The Council of Europe is an international organisation that seeks to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
It works closely with the European Union, which in turn launched its own unprecedented probe into the PiS’s controversial legislative changes last month, in a move that could result in punitive measures.
