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The origins of this drama in Warsaw lie in the conservative nationalist government's attempts to push through some laws that would have significantly increased the ruling party's influence over the judicial system. And this provoked a lot of opposition from the government's critics. Some of which we've seen on the streets of Warsaw. With tens of thousands of people protesting these changes, which they see as a fundamental shift away from the progress the very, very significant progress in the direction of democracy and the rule of law, since the overthrow of communism in 1989.
President Duda, who vetoed two of the three laws that would have changed the judicial system, was influenced in his decision by behind the scenes pressure coming from the European Union and the United States. Both of which made it very clear they thought these judicial changes were bad news. I think he also wanted to show that as president, he's not completely beholden to the ruling party and its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
I don't think this crisis is diffused completely, by any means. Let's have a look at what President Duda did. He vetoed the bills. But they could easily be revived by the government. The question is, in what form would they try to do that? Would they try to recognise the scale of opposition to the bills? Modify them a little bit. But nevertheless, try to get them through in such the way that the essence of the legislation remained intact. That's one possibility.
Another possibility is that they might seek somehow to override the president's veto by getting a 3/5 majority in the Polish parliament. Now that is needed. And the ruling party on its own doesn't have that size a majority. So there are some concerns that what they might do is try and ambush the opposition in parliament. By catching them unawares, and ramming through an attempt to override the veto, when you don't have all the opposition MPs sitting in the chamber.
So there are ways that they can deal with this. I certainly don't think that the government is going to give up on its attempt to seize some form of control over the judicial system.
