Successful Monitoring of Candidates for Justices of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

Kazimierz Barczyk, a lawyer from Krakow, as a candidate. The proposal was made without any public consultation with the legal profession or the academic community. The opposition party, Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) proposed Professor Krystyna Pawłowicz of Warsaw University, an expert in economic administrative law, known for her critical views on Poland's integration with the EU.

Mr. Barczyk met criticism as a candidate. His professional qualifications for the position at the Tribunal have been questioned. Many commentators saw the proposal as a purely political nomination. Mr. Barczyk has been active in the Solidarity movement since the early eighties. Later he was a member of Parliament and of various political parties, usually oriented to the center or tothe right side of the political spectrum in Poland. In his biographical information, Mr. Barczyk lists membership in the Civic Platform in 2004-2010. Recently, he has been active as a politician at the local level. In 1974-1982, Mr. Barczyk worked first as a candidate-judge and then judge. Currently, Mr. Barczyk is active as an attorney, but according to the press he is not well-known for his professional activity in this field.

In course of the monitoring, the NGO Coalition issued a statement to the Justice and Human Rights' Committee of the Polish Parliament. We took the position that the elections were not fully transparent, and proceeded too quickly. The NGO Coalition complained that there was no practical way for the NGOs or the public to vet the candidates. Following the statement and growing controversies regarding Mr. Barczyk, the Polish Parliament decided to defer the vote by two weeks before the matter would come to the floor again.

By that time, the NGO Coalition obtained an official document from the Ministry of Justice on the career track of Mr. Barczyk. It became apparent that he failed to submit full and precise information to the Polish Parliament (and to general public) as regards his judicial career. He claimed to have been a judge in 1974-1982. In fact, between 1974 and 1980, he sat on the bench only as a not-yet-tenured candidate-judge (asesor sądowy), who had the power to adjudicate cases but was not fully independent, and who was not a judge under the law.

Second, it appeared that in 1977 he was dismissed from the position of the candidate-judge due to insufficient skills in dealing with civil cases.