The Majority Is the Question

On Friday 9 October, the Sejm’s Constitutional Accountability Committee adopted its report on the motion to bring Adam Glapiński, the president of Narodowy Bank Polski, before the State Tribunal, and asked the Sejm to hold him constitutionally accountable, RMF24 reported. No president of the central bank has been brought before the tribunal before, Polskie Radio 24 noted.

The committee upheld eight charges, Zbigniew Konwiński, who heads the Civic Coalition’s parliamentary club, told reporters. According to RMF24, they concern indirect financing of the budget deficit, acting without proper authorisation from the Monetary Policy Council, unauthorised currency interventions, actions contrary to the assumptions of monetary policy, obstructing the work of Council members and the bank’s management board, misleading the finance minister and breaching the rule that the bank’s president stay out of politics. Deputies of the governing coalition filed the preliminary motion in March 2024, and the committee had worked on it since May 2024, hearing more than 50 witnesses.

Two majorities

The Act on the State Tribunal sets out what happens next. Under Article 11, the committee presents the Sejm with its report and a motion either to bring the person before the tribunal or to discontinue the case, and a Sejm resolution to bring them before the tribunal suspends them from their duties. Article 1 lists the president of the central bank among the officials the act covers. Article 13 then sets the vote. For the central bank president and several other officials, the Sejm decides by an absolute majority of votes with at least half the statutory number of deputies present, which the Polish Press Agency, PAP, put at 230. For members of the Council of Ministers, the same article requires three-fifths of the statutory number of deputies.

The Constitutional Tribunal ruled on the central bank provisions in January 2024. According to Polskie Radio 24, it found that, because of the bank’s independence, a majority of at least three-fifths of the statutory number of deputies was needed, which is 276 votes, and said the Sejm should refrain from considering such motions until the law was changed. PAP reported that the tribunal also challenged the provisions on suspending the bank’s president. The ruling was published in the Journal of Laws, Polskie Radio 24 reported, but its legal effects remain disputed.

So the committee and the bank are reading two different texts. The committee proceeded under the act as it stands. Law and Justice, the opposition party, filed a minority motion arguing that the whole procedure is contrary to law and citing the 2024 ruling, RMF24 reported. Glapiński has said the bank will not take part in the procedure and that, in light of the ruling, the committee’s decisions are not relevant to it.

The difference is a number of votes. Polskie Radio 24 noted that a three-fifths threshold would mean the governing coalition needing support from part of the opposition. It recalled that in 2015 a motion to bring Zbigniew Ziobro before the tribunal fell five votes short, with 271 deputies in favour against the 276 required.

What the committee heard

The committee’s chair, Zdzisław Gawlik of the Civic Coalition, said its aim had been to verify whether Glapiński had performed his duties on monetary stability in line with the constitution, RMF24 reported. The rapporteur, Patryk Gabriel, said the governor could have given evidence but had ignored the committee’s work for two years. RMF24 also quoted a Civic Coalition deputy pointing to the cut in interest rates of 0.75 percentage points on 6 September 2023, made with inflation above 10 per cent and 39 days before the parliamentary election.

Iwona Arent of Law and Justice, the committee’s deputy chair, said the decision amounted in practice to paralysing the central bank. Krzysztof Szczucki of Rozwój Plus, which filed its own minority motion, argued that the bank’s purchases on the secondary market were not deficit financing, and that most of the decisions at issue were taken by the management board rather than by Glapiński alone.

Glapiński told a press conference on Thursday that the proceedings were harmful to Poland’s internal interests and could have a significant negative effect on its relations abroad, and that the bank would not yield to political pressure, RMF24 reported. Tadeusz Białek, president of the Polish Bank Association, told PAP that he was concerned about the continuity of the central bank’s work, Gazeta Prawna reported. He noted that the bank’s president chairs the Financial Stability Committee in its macroprudential role.

The calendar

The report now goes to the Marshal of the Sejm. Under the act, Polskie Radio 24 reported, the case files must be available to deputies for at least 21 days before the sitting at which the matter is considered. Glapiński’s second and final term ends in June 2028, PAP reported. The president of the bank is appointed and dismissed by the Sejm on the motion of the President of the Republic.

If the Sejm does vote, the first thing contested will be the count it uses: an absolute majority under the text of the act, or 276 under the tribunal’s reading of the constitution. The suspension in Article 11 turns on which one the Sejm accepts as having been reached.

Sources

The committee’s decision, the eight charges, the history of the motion, the remarks of Konwiński, Gawlik, Gabriel, Arent and Szczucki, and Glapiński’s statements are from RMF24. Białek’s remarks, the 230-deputy quorum, the tribunal’s challenge to the suspension provisions and the end of Glapiński’s term are from PAP as published by Gazeta Prawna. The 2024 ruling’s three-fifths threshold, its publication, the 21-day rule, the Ziobro vote and the absence of any previous case against a central bank president are from Polskie Radio 24. The text of Articles 1, 11 and 13 is from the consolidated Act on the State Tribunal published in the Journal of Laws, 2022, item 762. The 2024 ruling is case K 23/23 of 11 January 2024, published in the Journal of Laws, 2024, item 95; its operative part holds the absolute-majority rule in Article 13(1a), and the suspension in Article 11, unconstitutional as applied to the central bank president. Polish-language remarks are this publication’s paraphrase, not direct quotation.