The President of Poland, Andrzej Duda is on a collision course with the national-conservative PiS government With his Veto, the Parliament adopted electoral law change, he comes up to the smaller parties.
Critics say the Parliament adopted law is contrary to EU law. The European Union from the election in 2024, a Five-percent threshold for a party to the European Parliament. According to the new electoral law of the national conservative ruling party, the PiS, this hurdle for Polish parties would have been much higher.
How high, exactly, is only known from simulated projections. Which are apparently so complicated that some experts speak of an Eleven-percent-hurdle, others will come to as high as 20 percent.
A Commission of experts of the Senate, the second chamber of the Parliament, came to an effective threshold of 16.5 percent. Poland would be the only EU country in which the effective lock-up clause more than three times the EU would amount to default, the experts note in the analysis, which was before the Veto is known.
Hope, on the President: Polish citizens demonstrate against the government’s reform plans (archive)
Exactly what the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda referred on Thursday to state the grounds for his objection: So you would have removed yourself too far from a proportional representation, said Duda.
The Great benefit
The President could benefit himself by his Veto. Because it is clear that The Reform would have made it smaller parties almost impossible, to the EU Parliament. And on exactly whose support Duda is instructed, if he wants to be elected in 2020.
With his Veto Duda goes on the claim of the Polish Opposition, which denounces the of the PiS-driven law for months. She speaks of a “Toni” of Polish politics and of the “division of the whole pie into two great camps”, and accuses the PiS, the real purpose of the Reform was to create more of our own people to Brussels and Strasbourg, to send and to get more money.
Currently, the PiS in Europe has seats in Parliament, 19. It is calculated that the Polish election results of 2014 after the now rejected the election regulations, the national conservative would have received at the time of the 24 seats in the EU Parliament.
The President is not doing
The President of Duda, a trained lawyer, is compared with the ideas of his former party colleagues of the PiS skeptical. He may see himself as the “guardian of rules that make the parliamentarism, and democracy real,” and he was not agree that “the political scene in Poland will be so drastically reduced”.
With a view to the rejected choice of law, Duda said: “It will turn out that there is a large part of Polish society, can effectively make any choice.” The Veto of the PiS-law will make him in the government and in the national conservative voters disliked. So he leaves the role of the PiS-loyal head of state, all laws signed, well-behaved and because of the it is already considered “ball-point pen-the President” was referred to.
The Veto of the President of Duda (l.) against the Reform is a defeat for the head of government Mateusz Morawiecki (R)
A Test before the General election
While Andrzej Duda sees the Reform as a limitation of the democracy, it is for the PiS exactly the opposite. The government party argued that the Reform of the electoral law is a stimulus for the regions where the turnout was the lowest and the should now be able to get more mandates.
The national conservative support, according to most surveys over the last few years, more than a third of Poland. The European elections, which will take place in may 2019, is for the Ruling again for the opportunity to consolidate the electorate and to mobilize for the Polish parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2019. Therefore, the choice of procedure for the European elections is so important.
The dismantling of the state
For the Opposition, the law is the next step in the “dismantling the state”, a further building block in the long series of reforms, seeing in it a limitation of the democracy, and the abolition of the separation of powers. After the seizure of power in November 2015, the PiS has expanded the influence of the government on the constitutional court, ordinary courts and the Supreme court.
Head of state Duda had approved the reform of the judiciary at the time, regardless of the open criticism of the European Commission has now initiated infringement proceedings against Poland. Now, the President from the line of loyal party become enjoyed to the defenders of democracy and to the hopes of the Polish Opposition.