(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland’s access to some €60 billion ($65.7 billion) in European Union funding hasn’t been put at risk by a standoff with the nation’s head of state. 

The premier spoke on Monday hours after meeting with President Andrzej Duda, who has threatened Tusk’s reform agenda after he won an election in October on a campaign to dismantle eight years of nationalist rule. Duda’s latest salvo was to block the dismissal of a top prosecutor, complicating the premier’s bid to overhaul the judiciary. 

“I will work with president to get his approval on the judiciary reform, but in the end, this is going to be his decision,” Tusk said in Warsaw.

Over the past week, Duda and Tusk have clashed over two fugitive lawmakers who sought shelter in the presidential palace before being arrested. A top court moved to quash the government’s effort to probe the central bank chief. And thousands gathered in the streets of Warsaw to protest Tusk’s new pro-European government in a demonstration organized by the nationalist Law & Justice party, which was toppled from power after the October contest. 

The judiciary reform is at the center of a long-running battle over the rule of law in Poland with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Overcoming the tensions would give Warsaw access to the funding, which has been suspended over accusations of eroding democratic standards. 

But Duda gave no signal that he was backing off. He said he didn’t consent to the dismissal of National Prosecutor Dariusz Barski, who was appointed by Tusk’s predecessor under Law & Justice, because he said the government’s decision broke with legal procedures. 

“I appealed to the prime minister to restore the situation in line with the legal framework,” Duda said earlier. “What we are seeing raises concerns.” 

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The tension just over a month after Tusk took office has made clear that the premier’s aim to root out Law & Justice structures in the Polish establishment will be an arduous task — and is shaping up to be the biggest test of Polish democracy since the end of communism almost 35 years ago. 

At the center of the standoff lies a gaping division within the country’s legal system, a legacy of Law & Justice’s overhaul of the judiciary that the EU has pilloried for eroding the independence of the courts. 

Justice Minister Adam Bodnar introduced legislation on Friday aimed at reforming a mechanism to select judges, a first step in the government’s bid to restore the independence of the judiciary. The rules would reverse a 2017 overhaul, which transferred the power to choose judges from the National Council of the Judiciary, a constitutional body, to parliament. 

Bodnar stressed that the new rules were a beginning in the complex process of extricating the judiciary from politics. Authorities haven’t tackled a reform to the system for verifying judges, which the minister said involves detailed changes that will have to be negotiated with Duda, whose signature on the legislation is still required. 

--With assistance from Piotr Bujnicki.

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