Tag: rule of law

Report of the Stefan Batory Foundation Legal Expert Group on the impact of the judiciary reform in Poland in 2015-2018

“The two years that passed since November 2015 have brought the highest number of challenges and threats to human rights and freedoms in the entire post-1989 period”, reads today’s statement of the Helsinki Committee in Poland.

A dramatic change occurred in Polish constitutional politics in 2015: a combined presidential and
parliamentary victory of the populist Law and Justice party [PiS] began a series of deep political and
legal changes which turned the constitutional order on its head in many respects.
In this paper, I provide a detailed account of how comprehensive and momentous the legal changes
are, in particular going so far as to dismantle institutional checks on the government (including
paralysis the Constitution al Tribunal, and then conversion of it into an active supporter of the government) and
to erode a number of individual and political rights, such as the right to assembly and privacy.

The President doesn’t open the constitutional debate, he narrows it. Women who took the Black Protest to the streets, protesters against the assault on courts – that was the debate

The report “Nations in Transit”, published yearly by Freedom House, analyses key factors of democratic rule in post-communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. The report’s 2017 edition shows a clear decline of democracy in Poland. The country was doing worse in the fields of National Democratic Governance, Judicial Framework and Independence, Independent Media, Civil Society and Local Democratic Governance