Poland’s wide-ranging judicial reforms have “fundamentally affected” all parts of the country’s justice system, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe said in a report issued Friday.

It's yet another blow from a European body against the legal and social changes brought in by Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in recent years, and comes as the government prepares for this fall's parliamentary elections.

Dunja Mijatović, the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, a pan-European human rights watchdog with 47 member states that is not an EU institution, visited Poland in March to investigate the independence of the judiciary and women’s sexual and reproductive rights.

The report is likely to add ammunition to the opposition, which accuses PiS of authoritarianism and is trying to frame the upcoming election as a fight over Polish democracy.

The government's efforts to tighten already restrictive abortion laws sparked massive protests in 2016 by women, and it has since held off on the issue — wary of the political risks.

The Polish government has ignored previous Council of Europe reports. However, it is having a more difficult time with the EU, which has turned to the European Court of Justice.

However Mijatović found ongoing problems, saying the government should ensure “effective access” to abortion for Polish women. She said European Court of Human Rights judgements on restricting access to legal abortion “remain unimplemented," and that delay in accessing abortion poses “a very real and grave risk to women’s life and health.”

The hard-hitting report adds to the government's growing headache over judicial reforms, which have led to a long-running confrontation with the EU, as well as tensions with allies like Germany and the U.S.

Legal changes

Those reforms "had a major impact on the functioning and independence of practically all key building blocks of the country’s justice system, fundamentally affecting the Constitutional Tribunal, the National Council for the Judiciary, the Supreme Court, the common courts, individual judges, and the prosecution service,” said Mijatović's report.

The government issued a 41-page reply denying that the country's courts were politicized and that its system of choosing judges "does not infringe on any standards of European law."

Mijatović said she “deeply regrets” that the government hasn’t found any solution to the prolonged deadlock over the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s highest judicial institution which is supposed to rule on the constitutionality of laws passed by parliament.

A fight over the tribunal broke out immediately after PiS took power in late 2015, with President Andrzej Duda refusing to seat judges selected by the previous parliament, and the government refusing to publish the tribunal's verdicts, as required by the Polish constitution. The tribunal is now under the control of the ruling party.

“The independence and credibility of the Constitutional Tribunal have been seriously compromised,” the report said, adding that the Polish Supreme Court and ombudsman have stopped filing new constitutional complaints to the tribunal “citing lack of trust” in its independence and impartiality.

The government says reforms were needed to make the court system more effective and to remove judges tainted by loyalty to the pre-1989 communist system. Critics say it is an effort to bring the courts under the control of the ruling party, and the report notes European Commission data showing that delays in hearing cases have increased.

Mijatović found more problems with the judicial system, saying there were “serious concerns" with the composition and independence of the new National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ) — a body responsible for nominating new judges that is effectively elected by Poland’s legislative and executive branches.

If the ECJ follows the arguments made by the advocate general in Thursday's criticism of the NCJ, that could upend many of the government's judicial reforms.

That echoes an opinion issued Thursday by an advocate general of the European Court of Justice, who said the way the NCJ is appointed "discloses deficiencies that appear likely to compromise its independence."

Many of the judicial reforms have been rushed through parliament without committee hearings. Mitajović said she was “struck by the consistent resort to the fast-track parliamentary procedure … when it comes to amending the legislation relating to the Supreme Court,” noting the law has been changed eight times in the last 14 months.

Poland stands alone

The commissioner also said that the government hadn’t followed earlier advice from the Council of Europe regarding the prosecutor's office, which the PiS government has put under the control of the powerful Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. “On the contrary, subsequent legislative changes have extended even further the already vast powers of the combined functions of Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General.”

In its response, the government argued that uniting the minister of justice and prosecutor general into a single office has made the justice system more effective by making one person responsible.

Mijatović also found the scale of mass dismissals and disciplinary proceedings in the Polish judiciary “striking,” saying that 21 percent of court presidents and vice-presidents — 158 in total — were dismissed “often by fax, e-mail, or letter signed by the deputy Minister of Justice, providing little to no justification.” Ziobro has also demoted 113 of the highest-ranking prosecutors and replaced almost all heads of regional and district prosecutors’ offices.

The Polish government has ignored previous Council of Europe reports. However, it is having a more difficult time with the EU, which has turned to the European Court of Justice to try to rein Warsaw in, after efforts to use the Commission and Parliament proved ineffective.

The unfavorable court verdicts are gathering pace.

This week, the ECJ ruled that a law changing the retirement age of Supreme Court judges violated EU rules, and last week the ECJ advocate general issued an opinion that another law on the retirement ages of the whole judiciary was also flawed.

If the ECJ follows the arguments made by the advocate general in Thursday's criticism of the NCJ in its ruling due in the next three months, that could upend many of the government's judicial reforms. That's because many of the judges appointed by the council would have questionable legal status.

"What happens with the judges who are there, I don't know," Małgorzata Gersdorf, president of the Supreme Court, told Poland's RMF radio.

The government is already responding — charging the advocate with overstepping his bounds.

"This is an opinion with which we fundamentally disagree," Ziobro told reporters on Thursday, adding: "I exclude the possibility that the European Court of Justice will follow the advocate's opinion."

Leszek Mazur, the head of the NCJ, also rejected the advocate's opinion and cast doubt on whether Poland would follow an unfavorable ECJ ruling.

"We have to really think about that. If that verdict is similar to the opinion, it will mean an interference in the competences of member countries," he told Polish media.