Poland's Kaczynski insists on 'radical' reform of courts

The powerful head of Poland's governing conservatives, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, on Thursday attacked a presidential veto of plans to overhaul the judiciary as "a very serious mistake" and vowed not to back down. "The reform of the judiciary must be radical, because partial reform won't change anything," Kaczynski said in an interview with the ultra-Catholic television station Trwam, whose audience comprises diehard supporters of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party. The PiS-controlled parliament this month passed three contested judicial reforms that critics feared would undermine the separation of powers. But in a shock move, President Andrzej Duda this week vetoed two of them, adding to pushback from street protesters, the opposition and the EU. "That was a mistake, a very serious mistake," Kaczynski said of the vetoes by Duda, who is a close PiS ally and until now had always rubber-stamped everything sent his way. "Now we have to think about how to get out of this, what to do so that this ends up being just an incident, which will quickly be forgotten, while we forge ahead." The vetoed reforms would have increased political control over the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, and Duda said they did "not strengthen the sense of justice." Thousands of protesters had taken to the streets across Poland in recent days to oppose the reforms, while both the EU and the US voiced their concern. European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said following the vetoes that Brussels was still putting Warsaw on notice amid continuing fears that the Polish government's reforms could jeopardise the independence of the judiciary. "The commission's recommendation asks the Polish authorities not to take any measure to dismiss or force the retirement of supreme court judges," Timmermans said, warning that the EU could halt the country's voting rights in the bloc. The government had defended the reforms, calling them indispensable to combat corruption and streamline the judicial system. The vetoed reforms now return for amendment to parliament, where they require a three-fifths majority -- which the PiS does not have -- to go through unchanged. Duda said he would table his own versions of the laws within two months. The PiS began making changes to the judiciary, including the Constitutional Court, after coming to power in late 2015 following eight years in the opposition.