During the October 2022 plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe ODF had the honour to organise a public hearing under the title “Erosion of the rule of law in Poland: Political abuses of the prosecution office”.
The event, held on 13 October in the Council’s Strasbourg headquarters, was hosted by PACE Member Krzysztof Śmiszek MP (SOC, Poland) and featured a stellar array of rule of law experts & victims of the politicised Public Prosecutor’s Office in Poland:
- Judge Dominik Czeszkiewicz - judge of the regional court in Suwałki, Doctor of Law, Board Member of the Themis judges’ association;
- Jakub Kocjan - PhD candidate at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, activist who has been working for 5 years to defend the independence of the judiciary;
- Piotr Osiecki - entrepreneur and investment fund manager who spent 16 months behind bars as a scapegoat for Law and Justice’s “GetBack affair”.
The session was opened by ODF’s Vice-President Martin Mycielski and moderated first by MP Śmiszek, then by Jakub Kocjan.
