Since Poland’s last parliamentary elections in November 2015, members of the losing Euro-federalist party, Civic Platform, have accused the ruling Law and Justice Party of violating the Polish Constitution and steering the country toward authoritarianism. The charge has been loudly repeated by European Union officials. But what critics call authoritarianism is merely an attempt to reclaim for the Polish state the basic instruments of power held by governments in France, Germany and every other European state

State institutions in postcommunist societies have always been weak and prone to corruption. As one Civic Platform member said in a wiretapped 2013 conversation with a colleague: “The Polish state exists only in theory.” Law and Justice was elected on a promise to reform the Polish judicial system, much of which retains troubling connections to the communist past. Judges who sent anticommunist activists to prison in the 1980s still sit on Poland’s Supreme Court. Some are former members of the Communist Party.

Many Polish judges are unabashedly partisan. They attend political rallies, make public statements on partisan issues, and openly work with politicians to advance certain policies. In 2012 the president of the district court in Gdansk accepted a call from a journalist who pretended to be working for then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a co-founder of Civic Platform. The judge seemed ready to accommodate the phony aide’s requests. Mr. Tusk’s son had been employed by a company owned under a pyramid scheme that had been tried before that very judge, making the judge’s solicitousness all the more suspect.

Law and Justice’s proposed reforms included restoring checks and balances among the three branches of government. The process for staffing the court system is a collaborative one between the legislature and several professional associations representing judges. In most European countries the goal is to incorporate political input while maintaining judicial independence. In Poland, however, the judges have been granted carte blanche to fill out their own ranks. The professional associations are determined to hold on to these privileges.

In July, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, vetoed two of the three proposals put forward by his Law and Justice colleagues, but reiterated his commitment to radical reform. In this, he has the support of a vast majority of the population who are clearly dissatisfied with how the courts work. Whatever their current differences, the president and Parliament are unlikely to give in to EU pressure and drop the reforms.