Legal controversy in Poland after Supreme Court leads to battle between government and judiciary
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POLITICO described a ruling by Poland’s Supreme Court — that judges appointed by a politically controlled body are illegitimate as shocking, adding that this “unleashed a fierce battle between the judicial system and the country’s nationalist government, and worsened the ongoing conflict between Warsaw and Brussels.”
The court ruled overwhelmingly that judges appointed by the new body are not judges under either Polish or EU law — although verdicts that such judges may have issued will remain valid if they were made before Thursday.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he would ask the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to get involved. “I cannot allow for chaos and anarchy,” he said, calling the Supreme Court’s decision “an unprecedented act that could lead to the destabilization of the legal order.”
Małgorzata Gersdorf, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, fired back that the tribunal has no right to undermine the verdicts of other courts.
POLITICO says that Supreme Court decision came in response to a top EU court ruling in November, which said the new disciplinary body could undermine judicial independence, but threw the case back to the Polish courts to make a final determination. The Court of Justice of the EU said Polish courts could test the chamber by checking whether the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ) — the body that appoints the chamber’s members, as well as all court judges — is under political influence.
On Friday, the European Commission filed an application to the CJEU requesting interim measures on the continued functioning of the disciplinary chamber. If the CJEU decides to act, the Polish government will have to effectively suspend the chamber.
Polish officials in Brussels said that Warsaw has always obeyed the orders of the EU’s highest court.
