2025-01-03 15:09 update: 2025-01-03, 15:11
Photo: PAP/Leszek Szymański
Poland's interior minister has said he can see no possibility of the main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) receiving funding from the state budget due to inconsistencies in a recent National Electoral Commission (PKW) resolution.
In late December, PKW accepted the PiS electoral committee's report following a ruling in PiS's favour by the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court, despite expressing doubts about the chamber's legality.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the interior minister, told the private TV broadcaster TVN24 on Thursday evening that the PKW resolution is "strange, contradictory and inconsistent" and therefore does not oblige the finance minister to release financing for the former ruling party.
Siemoniak also quoted the December 18 resolution by the Council of Ministers, which said that the rulings of the country's Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court's Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs are defective by definition due to the fact that some of their judges had been selected in a procedure that violated rule-of-law standards.
"There exists the resolution by the Council of Ministers of December 18... and I have no doubt that based on this the finance minister has no reason to take action," Siemoniak said.
In late August, PKW rejected the financial report of the PiS electoral committee. PKW found that the socially-conservative ex-ruling party misspent PLN 3.6 million (EUR 843,000) of public money during the 2023 parliamentary election campaign. This triggered a cut in the subsidy each party was eligible to receive depending on the number of voters that supported it in the elections and, as a result, the subsidy for the PiS electoral committee was to be reduced by PLN 10.8 million (EUR 2.53 mln).
PiS appealed the decision to the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, a Supreme Court unit that the ex-ruling party established when it was in power.
The chamber is composed of the so-called neo-judges, who were appointed in a procedure that the current government and EU institutions consider as politicised and thus incompatible with rule-of-law standards. (PAP)
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