NSA Rules Against PiS: Party Subsidies Definitively Blocked

The Supreme Administrative Court has dismissed Law and Justice’s final appeal regarding frozen state subsidies, ending a high-stakes legal battle over millions in campaign funding.

Grounds for the Ruling and Rejection of the Appeal

This is the final judicial resolution in the fight for multi-million-dollar support from the state budget. The Supreme Administrative Court sealed the fate of the Law and Justice complaint regarding the withholding of subsidies and party grants by the Ministry of Finance, with ruling coalition politicians speaking of a crushing verdict and a lack of any legal doubts.

The Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the cassation appeals on Wednesday regarding grants and subsidies for PiS, focusing on the complaint concerning body inactivity over the non-payment of party grants. Finance Minister Andrzej Domański stated that the court’s verdict, which is crushing for PiS, has been upheld.

Information regarding the dismissal of the cassation appeared on Wednesday on the website of the Supreme Administrative Court. The court dismissed the cassation concerning the verdict of the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw from June of last year, when the court responded to the PiS complaint by stating that the finance minister was not inactive when refusing party grants if acting on the basis of a National Electoral Commission decision reducing subsidies due to the rejection of the election report, even in the event of a later ineffective Supreme Court ruling.

Political Reactions and Minister Domański’s Statements

Ruling coalition politicians commented on the matter on the X platform. Domański wrote after the ruling that the court verdict is crushing for PiS, the cassation is dismissed, there are no doubts, and another PiS lie has been exposed, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk added that, as stated, there is and will be no money for swindlers.

A little later, in an interview with TVN 24, Domański emphasized that the NSA decision confirms the WSA verdict from June of last year, which very clearly stated that as the head of the Ministry of Finance, by not paying the PiS subsidy, he acted in accordance with the law and there was no question of inactivity or delayed action. According to the minister, Wednesday’s decision is a final and complete victory over the slander coming from PiS.

Domański recalled that the decision not to pay the subsidy was related to the National Electoral Commission’s decision from August 2024, when it rejected the PiS report on the 2023 parliamentary elections. The PKW decision was justified by irregularities in the financing of the PiS election campaign, and Domański stated in the TVN24 interview that PiS treated public funds as its own during the campaign and spent them for its own political purposes.

Blocked Millions and Tranche Distribution Breakdown

According to the WSA verdict from June of last year, Law and Justice filed a complaint after not receiving the third installment of the subsidy for 2024 from the Ministry of Finance, amounting to 6,483,343.76 PLN. The finance ministry did not pay the party the money in connection with the rejection of the PiS election report by the PKW.

For 2024, PiS first received two full quarterly installments of the subsidy, and later, after the PKW rejected the report and in view of the finance minister’s position, the third tranche was not paid. The fourth tranche, according to information provided to the media by the Ministry of Finance, was paid in reduced form in January 2025, meaning PiS received approximately 15 million PLN for 2024, which is over 10 million PLN less than the anticipated annual subsidy for the party.

Legal Procedures and the Dispute Over the Supreme Court Chamber

According to the Act on Political Parties, the application for payment of the subsidy along with an up-to-date extract from the register of political parties is submitted to the minister of finance via the PKW. The subsidy is paid each year of the parliamentary term in four quarterly tranches during the month following the quarter for which it is paid, though the PKW decided on April 23 to postpone its decision to the next meeting.

The PKW decision to reject the PiS report was appealed by PiS to the Supreme Court. The Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court, whose responsibilities include reviewing complaints against PKW resolutions, recognized the complaint.

Because of this, the PKW accepted the financial report of Jarosław Kaczyński’s party while noting that it did not prejudge whether the Supreme Court chamber is a court and did not prejudge the effectiveness of its ruling. Finance Minister Andrzej Domański then asked the PKW for an interpretation of the resolution because, in his view, it was internally contradictory, and according to judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court chamber is not a court, with its status questioned by both the current government and most legal circles.