Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday unveiled a controversial law creating a commission to investigate “Russian influence in Poland,” an organization the opposition and many lawyers have classified as “unconstitutional” and “Stalinist,” Reuters and News.ro reported.

This commission, consisting of nine members elected by the lower house of parliament dominated by the ruling conservative-populist coalition, will be able to decide whether the country’s political leaders succumbed to Russian influence in the period 2007-2022. can impose sanctions on them without any judicial process.

A person found “guilty” can be banned from holding public positions with access to state finances and classified information for ten years in order to “prevent him from repeated actions under the influence of Russia to the detriment of interests.” of the Republic of “Poland”, according to the text of the law.

What does the law on “Russian influence” adopted by Poland provide.

The government has not foreseen any possibility of appealing these decisions, unless there are formal violations in the work of the commission. Its head will be appointed by the Prime Minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, and its members will not be responsible for their decisions.

The authorities claim that such a commission is “indispensable” for eliminating Russian influence in Poland, which has become a staunch ally of Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.

“I hope that the parliament will responsibly elect the members of the commission,” President Andrzej Duda said in a televised speech on Monday. He announced that he had released the law, which was passed three days earlier by the parliament controlled by the Law and Justice party (PiS, populists) and its allies.

Poland’s president, who hails from PiS, announced that he would post-facto refer the law to the Constitutional Court, which would not prevent the law from taking effect.

According to critics of this legislative project, the creation of this Commission violates the constitutional principles of the separation of political and judicial power, and this body entrusts its powers to the prosecutor and the judge at the same time.

The text was rejected by the opposition-controlled Senate in early May, but the nationalist majority managed to pass it in a second vote in the lower house on Friday, with 234 votes in favor and 219 against.

Accusing the Warsaw government of “Stalinist” activities

During the vote in the Senate, independent senator Krzysztof Kwiatkowski said that “this act overturns the principles of Western civilization based on respect for the law: it is as if a gang of Huns decided to create a law.”

Other senators called the law a “witch hunt” and a “puppet court.”

On Monday, parliamentarian Marcin Kerwinski from the Civic Platform party of former Prime Minister Donald Tusk strongly condemned Duda’s decision to promulgate the law.

“In a normal democratic country, whoever is the president of this country would never sign such a Stalinist law,” he told TVN 24.

The adoption of the law comes as Poland prepares for parliamentary elections at the end of the year, but the government has not yet determined their date.

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