ECJ says that Polish judicial reforms violated EU law
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Polish judicial reforms that lowered the retirement age of Supreme Court judges violated EU law, the European Court of Justice ruled Monday.
POLITICO reports that the ECJ found that the retirement law, passed in 2018, “is not justified by a legitimate objective and undermines the principle of the irremovability of judges, that principle being essential to their independence.”
The report adds that Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party argued that lowering the retirement age from 70 to 65 would add younger judges to the bench, saying the measure was needed to cleanse the court of judges who had started their service in communist times.
#ECJ : #RuleofLaw#Poland – the provisions of the Polish law concerning the lowering of the age of retirement for the judges of the Supreme Court of Poland are contrary to #EU law https://t.co/fPeheqCcoj
The ECJ in October ordered that the changes be frozen until it had time to issue a ruling. Poland backtracked on the retirement law in November, but the ECJ said that Monday’s verdict was still warranted because it was not certain whether alleged violations of EU law had been eliminated
