Poland's president proposes urgent change to law on Russian influence

WARSAW, June 03 (AP): Polish President Andrzej Duda said Friday that he was proposing urgent amendments to a law on Russian influence he signed this week that drew U.S. and European Union criticism.
Duda said he was aware of objections, including in Poland, to the law proposed by the governing conservative Law and Justice party and was addressing them by sending proposed revisions to parliament.
He urged Polish lawmakers to act swiftly, but it was not clear how fast the two-house national legislature would chose to proceed. He insisted the law was needed for the sake of public transparency and also to prevent Russia from influencing Poland's security.
In its current form, the law would create a powerful committee, ostensibly meant to investigate Russian influence in Poland. However, critics see it as primarily targeting opposition leader Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who also served as a top EU official.
Law and Justice accuses Tusk of having been too friendly toward Russia as prime minister between 2007 and 2014, and making gas deals favorable to Russia before he went to Brussels to be the president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019.
Critics say the law violates the Polish Constitution and could keep government opponents from holding public office without full power to challenge the decisions in court. They say it could also have a negative effect on the eligibility of opposition candidates in a parliamentary election later this year.
Opponents said the urgent amendments indicated a retreat by Duda, who holds a PhD in law.
"It is unbelievable that a person who has a doctor's degree in law has not read the bill through," said Robert Kropiwnicki, a lawmaker with the Civic Coalition, an opposition political alliance. "He needed four days to read it, understand it and is now amending it."