Dorota Dakowska - Speech on France Culture, podcast "Cultures Monde": Poland: restoring institutions by forced march".
Intervention by Dorota Dakowska in France Culture's "Cultures Monde" podcast on Wednesday 7 May 2025 (around 40min).
Summary:
Since his return to power in 2023, Donald Tusk has been trying to restore Poland's constitutional and legal order, which has been undermined by 8 years of governance by the Law and Justice party (PiS). But the Prime Minister is up against the PiS's many allies in the Polish institutions.
With :
- Jérôme Heurtaux, lecturer in political science at Paris-Dauphine University, former director of the French Centre for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES) in Prague
- Jaroslaw Kuisz, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly "Kultura Liberalna".
- Dorota Dakowska, university professor of political science at Sciences Po Aix and specialist in Central Europe
The victory of the Civic Coalition led by Donald Tusk in the 2023 legislative elections was presented as a "Polish miracle" by the parties making up the new majority. If this changeover had the appearance of a break with the past, it was because it signalled the return of democracy and the independence of the judiciary in a country marked by eight years of government practices deemed to be illiberal. United around the desire to put an end to the stranglehold of the Law and Justice party (PiS) on the country's institutions, the Civic Platform, the Third Way party and the Left have made the restoration of the rule of law the core of their joint programme.
Between 2015 and 2023, Jarosław Kaczyński's national-populist party carried out a myriad of reforms enabling it to place its supporters at the heart of the institutions and strengthen the prerogatives of the President of the Republic. Nearly 1,800 judges and assessors close to PiS have been appointed since 2015, through laws and reforms whose legality is now widely contested. As soon as it came to power, the new majority found itself faced with obstruction of the institutions by PiS loyalists. In both the Sejm and the Constitutional Court, they block or slow down many of the government's bills and reforms. This is without counting the major obstacle posed by the President of the Republic, Andrzej Duda, for the Civic Coalition. With his relatively broad right of veto, the PiS ally has the final say on many appointments and laws until his term expires in May 2025.