Demonstrations erupted in dozens of cities across the country as the right-wing governing party consolidated its power and escalated a clash with the European Union.
WARSAW — Poland’s government carried out a sweeping purge of the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, eroding the judiciary’s independence, escalating a confrontation with the European Union over the rule of law and further dividing this already riven nation.
Poland was once a beacon for countries struggling to escape the yoke of the Soviet Union and embrace Western democracy. But it is now in league with neighboring nations, like Hungary, whose leaders have turned to authoritarian means to tighten their grip on power, presenting a grave challenge to a European Union already grappling with nationalist, populist and anti-immigrant movements.
The forced retirements of up to 27 of 72 Supreme Court justices, including the top judge, and the creation of a judicial disciplinary chamber, were the latest in a series of steps taken by Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party to seize control over the justice system.
For years, the party has demonized judges as unreconstructed Communists and obstructionists. After taking power in 2015, it took control of the Constitutional Tribunal, which is tasked with ensuring that laws do not violate the Constitution, and gave control of the country’s prosecutors to the Ministry of Justice. Most recently, it co-opted the body responsible for selecting new judges. In recent days, judges who have spoken out against the changes have reported being harassed and intimidated.
Each move was greeted with international condemnation and angry street protests .
Hours before the purge took effect at midnight, tens of thousands of people again took to the streets in more than 60 cities and towns around the country. As the sun set in Warsaw, crowds gathered in front of a memorial dedicated to those who died in the city’s 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, chanting an old but familiar refrain: “Solidarnosc.”
But now, calls for solidarity were not directed at an occupying force — or at Communist rule, which the labor-backed Solidarity movement brought down in 1989 — but at a democratically elected government, albeit one the demonstrators fear is undermining the system they fought so hard to build.
“We are here because of the destruction of the judiciary in Poland,” said Kamila Wrzesinska, who stood amid a sea of Polish and European Union flags. Organizers passed out placards with one word: “Constitution.”
In an interview just days ago, the leader of the Supreme Court, Malgorzata Gersdorf, expressed deep concern about her country’s direction.
“I don’t want to say that I am terrified,” she said, “but without a doubt this is not a direction I would like to go in, nor support, as I think it destroys what has been built over the last 25 years.”
The new law passed by Parliament requires that judges retire when they turn 65 unless they appeal to the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has sole discretion over whether they can remain.
Justice Gersdorf, who is 65, and more than a dozen others have refused to make such appeals, saying that the law itself was unconstitutional. Their supporters say the law was aimed at certain judges and had little to do with age, an argument that was bolstered when the government named Justice Gersdorf’s replacement: the 66-year-old judge Jozef Iwulski.
The ousted justices vowed to show up for work Wednesday morning, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with the authorities.
Officials with the governing party say they are simply overhauling a corrupt system that obstructs popular will. But critics, both in Poland and abroad, contend they are creating a system in which the courts are subservient to politicians, who then will be able to change the Constitution through judicial rulings.
In his zeal to create what he calls a Fourth Republic, free of any vestiges of the days of Communist rule and vest the state with ever greater power, the party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has also set the nation on a collision course with the European Union. The bloc views the changes as a threat to the rule of law and the Western values at the heart of the treaty binding the union of nations.
The European Union’s failure to curb Hungary’s drift toward authoritarianism has emboldened other leaders in the region, where right-wing nationalism and populism are on the rise. Right-wing governments have taken power recently in Austria and Italy, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, a guardian of liberal Western values, just agreed to build camps on Germany’s borders to process migrants.
If Poland is not made to pay a high price for its actions, critics and outside legal experts worry, currents unraveling democracy in member states will be further strengthened.
Yet it is far from clear how much more the bloc can do. For the first time in its history, it has turned to the so-called nuclear option, invoking Article 7 of its founding treaty. Poland could lose its voting rights as part of that process, although it would require a unanimous vote by the 28 member nations — a highly unlikely result, considering its strong backing from other countries in the region that have moved in an authoritarian direction, notably Hungary.
European officials also announced on Monday that an infringement procedure had been started against Poland, which could result in the case being referred to the European Court of Justice, The court could declare the judicial overhaul unconstitutional, but it cannot stop it.
For now, many of the country’s 10,000 judges remain united in their opposition to the government’s measures. And counter-pressures are building in the country’s vibrant civil society.
Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement that ended Communist rule in Poland and then served as president from 1990 to 1995, vowed on Sunday to lead a campaign of civil disobedience if Justice Gersdorf and other judges were removed.
“I am saying a definite ‘enough’ to this,” he wrote on Facebook. “If they raise their paws against the Supreme Court, then I am going to Warsaw.”
Judges who have spoken out publicly against the purge have reported being threatened, harassed and intimidated.
Waldemar Zurek, a former spokesman for the National Council of the Judiciary and a district court judge in the city of Krakow, has been openly critical of the changes. In response, he says, both he and his family have been subject to intense pressure and abuse, including death threats.
Judge Zurek said he was dismissed as a spokesman for the courts, threatened with disciplinary sanctions over fabricated allegations, and harassed by government agents, including at his home. His financial records were improperly disclosed, he has faced what he calls a trumped-up investigations about a long-ago real-estate transaction, and he has gotten scores of threatening emails and letters.
“All those who stand in the way of the minister become public enemies,” he said. “They are spat on.”
Justice Gersdorf, 65, whose title is first president of the Supreme Court, said she thought that the mandatory retirement age was set with her in mind. Backed by 63 other judges on the court, who voted unanimously last week that she should stay in office until the end of her six-year term, she said that she would continue to show up for work.
