POLAND
The repeated disciplining of a long-serving Public Prosecutor has been seen as part of an attempt by the Polish Government to control the country’s judicial system.
Krzysztof Parchimowicz (pictured) faces accusations of insubordination for the second time, while three more charges are yet to be heard.
Before the ruling Law and Justice Party (PIS) came to power in 2015, Mr Parchimowicz was the country’s most senior Public Prosecutor.
He has since been demoted three levels to a job he last held 30 years ago.
The PIS has stacked the Constitutional Tribunal (which rules on the constitutionality of legislation) and the National Council of the Judiciary (which is supposed to guard judicial independence) with its own appointees.
It has also moved to do the same to the Supreme Court, lowering the mandatory retirement age for judges and subordinating those who were left to two new chambers, one of which is responsible for so-called judicial discipline.
Last year, the Government was forced to reverse aspects of its Supreme Court purge following legal pressure from the European Union.
The fight to control Poland’s 6,000 Public Prosecutors began in 2016, just months after PIS came to power, when hundreds of high-level staff were ousted or demoted from Prosecutors’ offices nationwide.
PIS has said its justice reforms are needed to root out corrupt officials and communist-era holdouts and to make the system more efficient.
It argues that, as Public Prosecutors are PS employees, bringing them under closer Government supervision is good for democratic accountability.
However, the same cannot be said of judges, whose independence is supposed to be rigidly guarded in democratic societies.
Mr Parchimowicz said he is certain he will eventually lose his job.
“I am at peace with the idea that I will be fired from work, in one or another disciplinary proceeding, but the implications extend beyond the career of any individual Prosecutor,” Mr Parchimowicz said.
“All that PIS is doing wrong in the area of rule of law, in terms of the rule of law, takes us back to communist Poland.”
Warsaw 14 October 2019
