Since at least 2015, the
Polish government headed by the
right-wing populist Law and Justice party has been accused of facilitating
democratic backsliding, specifically within the realm of
judicial independence. The party has been accused of curtailing the independence of the judiciary, eliminating the
separation of powers, and exercising undue influence over the courts. While the cabinets led by
Beata Szydło and
Mateusz Morawiecki received popular support among
conservatives and the
national Catholic Church and
EU institutions.
Lex Tusk On 29 May 2023,
President of Poland Andrzej Duda announced that he would sign a bill which would establish an investigative panel into whether the liberal party
Civic Platform, which was leading the opposition in the
national Parliament at the time, had allowed the country to be
influenced by Russia under the cabinets of
Donald Tusk and
Ewa Kopacz from 2007 to 2015, thus making Poland dependent on
Russian oil and
natural gas. The bill, which was published on the
Journal of Laws the following day, would allow the Parliament to create a 10-member commission, whose head would be directly selected by
Prime Minister Morawiecki, that would deliver an initial report on 17 September 2023, ahead of the
parliamentary election that was set to be held later in the year; the panel would also be allowed to ban any political figures found to have subjected Poland to Russian influence from holding most official public duties for ten years. The "Lex Tusk" also drew criticism from the
European Union, through official statements by
Věra Jourová and
Didier Reynders, and the
United States, with
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller filing an official announcement. According to the Polish president, the proposed amendments would ensure that the law was subject to
non-partisan review, that no parliamentary members would be allowed to be part of the commission, and that none of the politicians who would face charges as a result of the investigation could be banned from public office. ==Protests==