The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has once again declared a regulation in the Polish judicial system to be inadmissible. The judges ruled that it is against EU law that the Minister of Justice, who is also the prosecutor general, can delegate judges to higher criminal courts at his discretion and terminate such a delegation at any time.
According to the ECJ, the rule means that the seconded judges do not have the guarantees and independence that a judge in a constitutional state should normally have for the duration of the secondment. According to the judgment, it cannot therefore be ruled out that the regulation will be used as an instrument for political control of the content of judicial decisions.
The judgment of the judges in Luxembourg is one of many decisions of the ECJ in connection with the controversial Polish judicial reforms. It was only in October that the court ordered Poland to pay a daily fine of one million euros for failing to implement an earlier ruling on controversial judicial reforms.
Justice Minister Ziobro is considered a right-wing hardliner
Specifically, it was particularly about the order to stop the work of the disciplinary body to punish judges. According to ECJ rulings, the activity is not compatible with EU rules on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
The way Poland’s national-conservative PiS government has dealt with the country’s judicial system has been heavily criticized for years. The government in Warsaw, and especially Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, have so far not given any signals on the crucial points.
Ziobro is also the architect of judicial reforms. Within the national-conservative PiS government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, he has made a name for himself as an anti-European, right-wing hardliner. He argues that his reforms are necessary to make the Polish judicial system more efficient and also to free it from judges who were shaped under communism.