Page 47 - bne magazine November 2021_20211104 uzbekistan risding

bne November 2021 Central Europe I 47
of it,” Traczyk-Stawska told the nationalists’ leader Robert Bakiewicz.
The background to the tribunal’s ruling is the long-standing spat between the PiS government and the EU over the former’s overhaul of the judiciary. Brussels says that the reforms are violating the EU’s principles of rule of law, because they damage judicial independence.
Making the courts dependent on the ruling party enables PiS to ignore unfavourable rulings from domestic judges or the CJEU. It also destroys the confidence of foreign investors that European law will be implemented in a uniform way across the EU.
Particular elements of the changes have been challenged by several rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), which Poland ignored. The Commission has even asked the CJEU to impose a daily penalty on Poland for ignoring its ruling on suspending the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court.
The PiS government insists it has no intention of leaving the bloc but is
only concerned by the trend of the EU "usurping" more and more competencies that should belong exclusively to the member states.
The EU, predictably, takes an opposite view, a harbinger of tension only to grow between the two sides.
The tribunal’s ruling is also going to complicate Poland’s standing in terms of receiving tens of billions from the EU’s pandemic recovery fund, which Brussels had decided recently will be conditional on member states’ meeting the rule of law criteria.
Poland's fund money is already being held up because of what the EU sees as its violation of the key principles of rule of law.
“I cannot imagine that Poland would receive money from the [recovery fund] in this situation,” the European Parliament’s Vice President Katarina Barley told the opposition newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on October 10.
Poland extends state of emergency on border with Belarus until end of November
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
The Polish parliament voted late on September 30 to extend the state of emergency along the border with Belarus until the end of November.
Poland has been dealing with a steep spike in the number of people trying to cross from Belarus. In September alone, Poland’s Border Guard recorded some 6,000 attempts to cross the border, 60 times the figure from the entire 2020.
Poland says the influx of migrants, who are chiefly from the Middle East
and South Asia, is a premeditated action by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka to sow chaos on the eastern flank of the EU. Lithuania and Latvia have also been trying to stem the inflow of migrants.
The parliament okayed a motion from President Andrzej Duda 237 to 179 with 31 abstentions. A state of emergency can only be extended once by no more than 60 days.
Poland’s government claims that the state of emergency is necessary to contain the inflow of migrants, who could pose a danger to the Polish state and its citizens.
“In one of the phones [intercepted from migrants], [we] found the number to a person arrested in one of the EU countries on August 22. According to our allies' databases, that person was involved in preparing a terrorist attack in the EU and is a fighter for the Islamic state,” Home Affairs Minister Mariusz Kaminski told the parliament.
Earlier this week, Kaminski led a press conference, which attempted to depict migrants as dangerous by showing pictures – allegedly found on migrants’ phones – of a man having an intercourse with a horse and another man groping seemingly underage girls. Other pictures were also shown to suggest migrants’ ties to the Islamic State or the Taliban.
The government’s allegations have proved difficult to confirm, as the media and NGOs are banned from the border area on the grounds of the state of emergency regulations.
Opposition parties, some media, and NGOs claim that Poland is violating international law by not allowing migrants to file for protection once intercepted on Polish territory. The Polish Border Guard, aided by the military, is also accused of pushing the migrants back to Belarus, where they are stuck right at the border, as the Belarusian servicemen do not allow them to go back any further.
The temperature in the area has dropped to below 10°C at night. At least five migrants have died in the border area due to exposure and it has been unclear how Poland had handled them after they crossed from Belarus. The government claims that it helps all who require medical care.
Poland is refusing help from the EU’s border protection agency Frontex, based in Poland, which could shed more light on the situation.
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