Poland – In an answer to a letter by Adam Glapiński, the chairman of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, asked to be kept informed about efforts by a future government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk to have Glapiński suspended and put on trial.
In her letter to Glapiński dated December 1, Lagarde mentions “that the members of the former opposition parties are considering submitting a preliminary motion to bring [Glapiński] to accountability before the Sate Tribunal”, Lagarde confirmed that “the ECB, in order to guarantee the independence of the governors of the national central banks, offers protection in case the Sejm was to subsequently adopt a resolution to prosecute [Glapiński], given that such resolution would lead to [his] automatic suspension as Governor of the Narodowy Bank Polski (NBP) and as a member of the General Council.”
Lagarde also wrote the governor of Poland’s central bank could “refer such resolution to the Court of Justice of the European Union and ask for the assessment of its lawfulness”.
The reason why Adam Glapiński turned to the EBC is that Poland, although not a member of the eurozone, has the obligation, as an EU member state, to guarantee the independence of its central bank. Meanwhile, prominent figures belonging to the new parliamentary majority that has emerged in Poland after the October 15 elections, including Donald Tusk, a former President of the European Council who is the declared candidate of this new majority to become Prime Minister, have said that they would like to put the NBP chairman on trial for several of his decisions which they consider unlawful.
The chairman of the National Bank of Poland is appointed by the Sejm, that is, the lower house of the Polish parliament, at the request of the President of the Republic of Poland for a six-year tenure. Adam Glapiński was thus appointed in 2016 and again in 2022 on a request from President Andrzej Duda, a politician from Law and Justice (PiS), when the Sejm was dominated by PiS, which had an absolute majority.
For years, opposition politicians have accused Glapiński of acting as a politician from PiS. The idea to put him on trial before the State Tribunal is a watered-down version of what Tusk and other Civic Platform (PO) politicians promised they would do if they won the elections.
In July 2022, in the city of Radom, Donald Tusk said that when he becomes prime minister he will have the Polish central bank’s chairman removed without going through the normal procedure. Asked by a journalist how concretely Tusk intended to proceed to get Glapiński out of the central bank, the Civic Platform’s vice-chair and former defence minister, Tomasz Siemoniak. explained that some “strong men will convince him.”