Court confirms Polish opposition MP has European immunity and cannot be detained

A court has issued a final ruling confirming that an opposition MP, Marcin Romanowski, cannot be held in detention on criminal charges because he is protected by immunity as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

The decision is a blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, which has pledged to bring members of the former Law and Justice (PiS) government to account for alleged crimes while they were in office. Prosecutors say they will now apply to PACE to have Romanowski’s immunity lifted.

Po decyzji SN i SO na dziś 2:0 dla Polski. Czarny piątek dla Tuska i bodnarowskich uzurpatorów. Ważny krok dla przywrócenia w Polsce prawa i porządku. Winni bezprawia muszą ponieść odpowiedzialność, aby nikt więcej nie sięgał bo bandyckie metody.

— Marcin Romanowski (@MarcinRoma19996) September 27, 2024

In July, Romanowski was stripped of his immunity as a member of the Polish parliament to face 11 charges – including for participation in an organised criminal group, having crime as a source of income, and abuse of power – dating to his time as a deputy justice minister in the former PiS government.

He was subsequently charged by prosecutors and detained. However, a court quickly ordered his release, finding that he still enjoyed immunity as a member of PACE. Prosecutors appealed against that decision, but that appeal has now been rejected in a final ruling.

“The Warsaw District Court found that the detention of Marcin Romanowski was rightly refused due to the immunity protecting him,” the politician’s lawyer, Bartosz Lewandowski, wrote on X. “The detention was unlawful and carried out with an excess of power.”

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In his statement, Lewandowski argued that yesterday’s decision also has “much more far-reaching legal consequences” as it shows that prosecutors “initiated proceedings against a specific person despite there being a formal obstacle to conducting them”.

“This means that the National Prosecutor’s Office is obliged to issue a decision to discontinue all 11 charges against Marcin Romanowski,” he concluded. “It’s not a good day for [national prosecutor] Dariusz Korneluk and [justice minister and prosecutor general] Adam Bodnar.”

Romanowski himself also celebrated the ruling on his case, as well as a separate one issued yesterday by the Supreme Court that effectively found that the government had unlawfully replaced the former PiS-era national prosecutor earlier this year.

“It’s two-nil for Poland,” wrote the politician on X. “A Black Friday for Tusk and the Bodnarite usurpers. An important step for restoring law and order in Poland. Those guilty of lawlessness must be held accountable so that no one else resorts to thuggish methods.”

The Supreme Court has issued a ruling that effectively found that the government unlawfully replaced a senior prosecutor earlier this year

However, the justice minister says the ruling has no legal force as it was issued by illegitimately appointed judges https://t.co/9fCE6d18uy

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 27, 2024

Subsequently, the the National Prosecutor’s Office issued its own statement acknowledging the court’s decision to uphold the release of Romanowski due to his European immunity. They said that prosecutors would now apply to PACE to have it lifted.

The statement also rejected Lewandowski’s claim that proceedings against Romanowski should be dropped entirely. “There is no so-called negative procedural premise…which would oblige the discontinuation of the proceedings,” they wrote.

If PACE agrees to lift Romanowski’s immunity, prosecutors will “repeat the activities of presenting charges and questioning [him] as a suspect”, added the statement.

Prosecutors had also unsuccessfully sought to have the presiding judge who issued Friday’s ruling removed from the case because he was appointed by the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) after it was reformed by the former PiS government in a manner that rendered it no longer a legitimate body.

W związku z dzisiejszym postanowieniem Sądu Okręgowego w Warszawie prokurator zwróci się do Zgromadzenia Parlamentarnego Rady Europy z wnioskiem o uchylenie immunitetu Marcinowi Romanowskiemu. https://t.co/UQZMc0eQzB

— Prokuratura (@PK_GOV_PL) September 27, 2024

Romanowski is one of a number of members of the former PiS government against whom Poland’s new authorities, which replaced PiS in power last December, have sought to bring criminal charges.

Last month, a fellow former justice minister, Michał Woś, was charged in connection to alleged abuses. However, he argues that the charges are invalid because they were brought by illegitimately appointed prosecutors.

Tusk recently claimed that, in order to fulfil his promise to restore democracy in Poland, his government may sometimes take actions that are “not fully compliant with the law”. However, he added that this was because of the legal chaos deliberately created by the former PiS government.

Following yesterday’s two court rulings that effectively went against the government, figures from both PiS and Confederation (Konfederacja), another opposition party, called on Bodnar and Tusk to resign.

In its efforts to restore democracy, the government may sometimes take actions that are “not fully compliant with the law”, admits @donaldtusk.

But he says this is because of the legal chaos deliberately created by the former PiS government https://t.co/AWlM6hRLie

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 11, 2024

Main image credit: Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwości (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.