European Parliament lifts immunity of Polish lawmakers amid abuse of power allegations

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The European Parliament on Tuesday lifted the immunity of two Polish lawmakers, allowing national prosecutors to move forward with charges for alleged abuses of power.

The vote by the European Parliament is one of the first victories of centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk in the justice arena.

Tusk came to power in 2023 with a promise of accountability for politicians in the national conservative Law and Justice party. Tusk and his supporters accuse them of having used state institutions to serve their political goals when they were in government from 2015 to 2023. However, changes to the justice system implemented by Law and Justice itself have limited the ability of Tusk’s prosecutor general from pursuing the Tusk’s accountability agenda.

The two lawmakers are Daniel Obajtek, former chief executive of state energy company PKN Orlen, and Michal Dworczyk. Their immunity was lifted to allow prosecutors to pursue specific charges, indicated by Polish authorities in requests filed to the European Parliament in 2024.

Polish prosecutors allege that Obajtek used Orlen money to pay for detectives who pursued his private agenda.

Dworczyk allegedly used his private email address to conduct state business, including sharing classified information, while he was the head of the the office of then-Prime Minister’s Mateusz Morawiecki between 2017 and 2022. Hackers published some of those emails on Telegram beginning in 2021, and he resigned in 2022 as a consequence.

The vote in the European Parliament on Tuesday was passed with a show of hands.

Obajtek and Dworczyk both deny the allegations against them.

“Thus, the European Parliament – ​​which speaks so loudly about the defense of democratic values, human rights and freedoms – makes it easier for Tusk’s team to carry out further political repression against me,” Obajtek wrote on X in response to the European Parliament vote. Dworczyk also accused the Tusk government of “political repression.”