The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the Supervisory Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court’s verdicts are invalid because that judicial body does not meet the European Union standard of an independent and impartial court.
The ECJ yesterday ruled that lower courts may not ignore the fact that the Supervisory Chamber lacks the attributes of a court under EU law and therefore must disregard its rulings.
The EU’s top court holds that European law overrides law in the member states, a view disputed by some constitutional courts and governments in the bloc.
In the case of Poland’s Supervisory Chamber of the Supreme Court, the Luxembourg-based ECJ ruled that when a higher domestic court does not satisfy the requirements of the EU of being an independent body, the remaining national courts should treat its decisions as having no legal effect.
The present centre-left government’s Polish justice minister Waldemar Żurek claimed the judgment by the ECJ meant Polish judges would be required to verify whether panels sitting in the Supreme Court met the EU standard of an independent and impartial court.
“We must finally put this in order,” Żurek said in a video posted on the justice ministry’s social media accounts.
Żurek, who was appointed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, also said that the principle of the primacy of EU law and the binding power of the EU court’s judgments requires that Polish laws and the case law of the Poland’s Constitutional Court cannot block such verification.
He said Polish judges were now obliged to check whether a given ruling came from a panel that met EU standards and, if not, to regard it as non-existent.
Supreme Court justice Kamil Zaradkiewicz slammed the ECJ ruling as “destructive for Poland’s legal system”.
He took to social media to write that “after the ECJ’s ruling any common court will be able to challenge an appeal of a higher court using the ECJ’s verdict as a basis for disregarding it and to challenge the nomination of any judge”.
“This is a continuation of legal idiocies which are particularly harmful as they are undermining the whole legal system in Poland.”
Poland’s Supreme Court is the country’s highest court for civil and criminal matters and its Supervisory chamber handles appeals in public-law disputes such as challenges to the validity of elections.
The Supervisory Chamber of the Supreme Court was created in 2018 during the judicial reforms pursued by the previous Conservative (PiS) government. It was immediately criticised by both the European Commission and ECJ for having judges appointed who had been put forward to the PiS-allied then-president Andrzej Duda by the National Judicial Council (KRS), a body responsible for recommending judicial appointments.
The KRS was perceived by both the EC and ECJ as a body controlled by the PiS government because as a result of its judicial appointments it was elected by parliament and not, as previously, by judges themselves.
The PiS defended the reform, arguing that in several other member states such as Germany and Spain, the legislature was involved in appointing bodies that recommend candidates for judicial appointments. It added that, according to EU treaties, the organisation of the judiciary was the domain of member states and that according to the Polish Constitution, it was the president who appointed judges, not the KRS.
The EC and ECJ have continued to maintain that Poland has taken a retrograde step from judicial independence and that the Lisbon Treaty makes observance of the rule of law an obligation for member states and EU institutions.
The EC withheld Poland’s post-pandemic and structural funds as a sanction against the PiS reforms but has now resumed the funding following the instalment of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government in late 2023.
Nevertheless, that administration has not been able to make progress on the judicial reforms it has proposed due to opposition from both Duda and his successor Karol Nawrocki.
