President's amendment to Russia commission law submitted to Sejm

The Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, has received a presidential draft amendment to the act on the commission for examining Russian influence.

President Andrzej Duda, earlier on Friday, announced he had submitted his draft and appealed to parliament to adopt the changes as soon as possible.

According to information on the Sejm's website, the bill was submitted to the lower house on Friday evening.

His amendment comes as a sharp change of tack for the president, who only signed the law on Monday. The law was then published in the Journal of Laws on Tuesday and entered into force on Wednesday.

It will establish a commission to examine alleged Russian influence on the internal security of the Republic of Poland in the years 2007-2022.

The law, which gives the commission the power to ban people from public office for up to 10 years, has generated a storm of controversy both inside Poland and abroad, with even key allies such as the United States expressing fears it could be used by the government to undermine free and fair elections in Poland.

In a possible attempt to defuse some of the criticism Duda said in statement that his project assumes that experts, not MPs will sit on the committee.

He also said that any appeals against its judgements will be directed not to the administrative court, but to the Court of Appeal in Warsaw (with the possibility of changing it to the court of appeal at the place of residence).

But in his statement Duda also stressed his "definite support" for the law, and that he was "absolutely convinced of the rightness" of his decision to sign it.