WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s government will submit a preliminary motion to put central bank governor Adam Glapinski before a state tribunal by the end of March, state news agency PAP reported a ruling coaltion lawmaker as saying, in what would be an unprecedented move for the European Union state.
The new pro-EU government led by Donald Tusk has vowed to ensure those it accuses of wrongdoing during the rule of the previous nationalist government will be brought to account and has launched sweeping changes in state media and the judicial system.
However, attempting to remove the head of the central bank is a potentially riskier move. The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, told Glapinski in a letter that he could refer any such move to the EU’s top court as it may affect the bank’s independence.
“We are working on a preliminary motion to hold the President of the NBP accountable before the State Tribunal and we are determined to carry out this process,” Janusz Cichon, chairman of the parliament’s Public Finance Committee told PAP.
“We plan to submit a substantively prepared motion to parliament by the end of March,” Cichon, who is a member of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), the largest grouping in the ruling coalition.
Glapinski, whose ties to the leader of the former ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) go back decades, has been accused by the current government of not being sufficiently independent.
He has also faced accusations of misleading the finance ministry over the central bank’s results and of potentially breaking constitutional rules that prevent the central bank from financing government borrowing when it launched a quantitative easing programme during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The National Bank of Poland (NBP) could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Anna Koper; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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