Poland - May 2023

President Andrzej Duda signed into law the creation of a new political commission to examine Russian influence on Polish public officials, which has been promulgated by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party as a national security measure. The opposition has expressed concerns that the law could be abused by PiS to silence critics and fear it is designed to target opposition leader Donald Tusk. The nine members of the new commission will be elected by the Parliament. The commission’s purview is backward-looking, covering the period 2007-2022, including the years when Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), the main opposition party and PiS’s major challenger in the upcoming elections in Autumn, was in power. Legal experts have criticised parts of the law as potentially unconstitutional, and these provisions have been referred to the Constitutional Tribunal (widely seen as under PiS influence) for review.

Sources: Notes from Poland (1), Notes from Poland (2), Politico, DW (1), DW (2), Balkan Insight