Wednesday

29th Nov 2023

Opinion

While Poles defend courts, Kaczynski hijacks EU elections

  • An electoral reform amendment has gone through in less than a month in Poland - while everyone was focussed on rule-of-law issues (Photo: Aleksandra Eriksson)

Following another series of rallies throughout the country, the Brussels media, policy-makers (those not on holiday) and NGOs continue their outrage over Poland's ruling party's seizure of the courts.

New bills tighten Law and Justice's grip on the Supreme Court and the judiciary, further abolishing the rule of law and weakening democracy.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

But while Twitter and EU bubble publications are flooded with photos of protesting crowds and "chains of light" in front of the presidential palace, the Law and Justice-controlled senate has adopted a law restructuring the electoral code for next year's European elections.

The changes, described by PiS lawmakers as "simplifying the code and eliminating differences between regions", have been panned by experts as severely damaging the proportionality principle and raising - quite extremely - the electoral threshold, both going against EU law.

As the senate's legislative office has pointed out in its expertise, the effective threshold will now be, depending on the constituency, anywhere between 16 percent and 20 percent. That's more than three times over EU's maximum 5 percent, and over a 10-fold increase from the 1.5 percent in 2014.

What it means in practice is that no party other than the ruling Law and Justice and perhaps the opposition Civic Platform (PO) has any chances of winning even a single mandate, as - according to most recent polls - the third most popular party wouldn't win even 10 percent of the vote nationwide.

For Polish citizens it simply means that millions of their votes will be discarded, as the two major parties, having received 20-30 percent of the vote, can win 50 or more percent of the seats - directly opposing the EU's proportionality principle.

To be clear, an effective threshold over 5 percent isn't unheard of in the EU (in fact, Ireland has 17.5 percent) while some smaller member states can have around 11 percent.

But each of these cases has its reasons.

For states with 13 mandates or less this is actually the norm. In the Irish case, the high threshold is due to their single transferable vote (STV) system, which actually increases proportionality.

Belgium has a 9.8 percent threshold with 21 mandates to accommodate the three linguistic regions. The only major exception, contradicting European standards, is France, which is in the process of amending its code to abide by EU law and dropping the threshold to only one percent.

Pushed through parliament

This new law (or, technically, amendment) was pushed through parliament swiftly and quietly, being overshadowed by more flashy, rule of law-violating legislation, as seems to be the modus operandi for Kaczynski and other authoritarian-wannabes around the world, Trump included.

The draft law appeared on the parliament's agenda on 21 June and was passed on 20 July, without consultation and with PiS refusing a public hearing demanded by the opposition Modern (Nowoczesna) party. After passing through Senate, the only step left is a signature from President Duda - nicknamed "the pen" by opposition protesters.

The Senate Legislative Office offers a simple solution to the law - replacing the 13 new constituencies with a total of three, resulting in an effective threshold of just 4.2 percent.

But it is doubtful that any Law and Justice lawmaker even read that opinion, let alone considered implementing it.

Just as it was the case with every single opinion of the parliament's legislative offices, each exposing yet another step Kaczynski is taking towards an authoritarian regime.

Because why would they care? Citizens don't, as European elections are still far away in their minds and there are far greater threats to democracy right here, right now.

The media don't care either, as there are no photo-worthy streets flooded with protesters to put on the front page. The only ones who could care, the Brussels elites who will have to deal with a flood of Kaczynski's cronies next year, are on holiday, and when they come back this topic will be far too low on their agenda.

Who does that leave then to show outrage? You, the reader, you, the EU citizen, and you, the "EU bubble" who should remind our officials that if they just let it go, they let the illiberal clique tear yet another piece off EU's democracy.

Martin Mycielski is Brussels correspondent for leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.

Polish PM defends judicial witch-hunt

Poland's judicial purge was meant to punish former communists, its PM has said, in an angry EU debate that saw him ultimately promise to respect EU court rulings.

The EU's 'no added sugars' fruit-juice label sleight-of-hand

The Food Information to Consumers package would have finally regulated the health or nutrition claims companies make on their products, claims like "heart-healthy" "30-percent less fat" or "no added sugar". Legislation on these claims is now 15 years overdue.

My experience trying to negotiate with Uber

After working with people in unusual employment situations for a decade, I thought I had seen it all as a union organiser. Then I began dealing with Uber.

Column

How centre-right conservatives capitulate to the far-right

Many conservatives in Europe seem to have forgotten the lesson of 1930s Germany. They sacrifice their principles on the altar of the polls and all-too-often try to overtake rightwing radicals on their own pet subjects like security or migration.

Latest News

  1. The EU's 'no added sugars' fruit-juice label sleight-of-hand
  2. EU belittles Russia's Lavrov on way to Skopje talks
  3. Member states stall on EU ban on forced-labour products
  4. EU calls for increased fuel supplies into Gaza
  5. People-smuggling profits at historic high, EU concedes
  6. EU bets big on fossil hydrogen and carbon storage
  7. How centre-right conservatives capitulate to the far-right
  8. My experience trying to negotiate with Uber

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  2. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?
  3. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  4. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  5. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  6. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  2. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersGlobal interest in the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations – here are the speakers for the launch
  4. Nordic Council of Ministers20 June: Launch of the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations
  5. International Sustainable Finance CentreJoin CEE Sustainable Finance Summit, 15 – 19 May 2023, high-level event for finance & business
  6. ICLEISeven actionable measures to make food procurement in Europe more sustainable

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us