Poland’s ruling conservatives have hit back at EU threats to halt the country’s voting rights in the bloc if it pushes through controversial judicial reforms, saying they amount to “blackmail”.
The EU warned on Wednesday that it would immediately move to deploy its most serious sanction if Poland’s far-right-wing government gave itself the power to fire its supreme court judges.
Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president of the European commission, acknowledged that Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, had this week stepped in to block two contentious reforms of the judiciary proposed by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS).
