The ruling conservative Law and Justice wants to set up a parliamentary investigating committee to look into the activities of the National Bank of Poland and of the banking supervision institutions, head of the PiS's parliamentary caucus Przemyslaw Gosiewski said. The PiS wants to focus on this committee and put off the creation of similar bodies – designed to scrutinize the privatization of banks, the steel concern PHS, the creation of national investment funds, special services' invigilation in the media – by a few months.

NBP governor Leszek Balcerowicz said that this idea was "a political revenge" for his Wednesday decision to exclude deputy finance minister Cezary Mech from the proceedings of the Banking Supervisory Commission concerning the merger of Pekao and BPH, at the request of the applicant, UniCredito Italiano. According to the daily Rzeczpospolita, it is possible that an additional sitting of the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, would be held on Tuesday so as to pass a law enlarging the KNB's lineup before it relaunches its proceedings on UCI's motion for permission to execute voting rights in BPH on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Mech knew long before Wednesday's sitting of the Banking Supervisory Commission about the motion to exclude him from the KNB's proceedings concerning the permit for UniCredito Italiano to execute voting rights from 71.03% in Bank BPH, Balcerowicz said on Friday. Awaiting the parliamentary debate on Mech's exclusion – at the request of UCI, which accused the minister in lack of impartiality – Balcerowicz organized a press conference in the lower house of parliament to inform the reporters that long before the KNB's sitting he submitted Mech with a motion asking him to withdraw from taking part in the proceedings on UCI's case.

 Mech was replaced at the KNB's sitting by Deputy PM and finance minister Zyta Gilowska. Balcerowicz stressed he consulted this decision with a number of renowned law experts. "Then I read the Premier's statement that my decision in the case of Mech was scandalous. I wonder how many legal opinions Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz read before formulating such a view. And how many legal opinions Andrzej Urbanski, a representative of the Presidential Chancellery, read before formulating an opinion about a coup d'etat," the NBP head concluded.

The KNB is due to continue its sitting on the matter next Wednesday. UniCredito announced earlier that it wanted to merge Bank BPH, of which it has taken over a 71.03% stake together with Germany's HVB, with its Polish asset - Bank Pekao SA. The merger would take place in one to two years. The Polish government is against the merger.