The European Commission has filed a motion to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in an effort to block Disciplinary Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court which punishes judges for judicial overreach and other violations.
The motion to the ECJ by European Commission could trigger so-called temporary measures, which would halt the works of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court (SN).
The Disciplinary Chamber of the SN has faced extreme pushback from Poland’s opposition since its inception, mainly because it can punish representatives of the Polish judiciary for overreaching their competencies and interfering in political affairs, both actions that are forbidden to judges under Poland’s constitution.
According to unnamed sources, the MEP who came forward with this initiative during the meeting of Socialists and Democrats was Polish Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) MEP and former post-communist Prime Minister of Poland Włodzimierz Cimowszewicz.
The resolution’s text, which is meant to chastize Poland as well as Hungary, was worked on by Spring MEP Sylwia Spurek.
EU commissioner Nicolas Schmit announced that “the college has decided to authorize legal authorities to apply for temporary measures to the ECJ concerning the violation of EU law, initiated by the European Commission in the matter of the disciplinary regime for Polish judges.”
PiS MEP Ryszard Czarnecki emphasized that “these actions are not part of the European Commission’s competencies and that they are against EU treaties which underline that the judiciary system of a state is entirely an internal issue of an EU member state”.
“The European Commission is ravenously increasing its competencies by breaking Union treaties. In this case, Poland should behave just like Spain, which ignored the ECJ verdict concerning taking mandates from Catalonian separatists,” Czarnecki explained.
PiS MP Bartłomiej Wróblewski also criticized the actions of the EC and ECJ, saying, “The ECJ can only concern itself with those areas, and decree only in those areas, which were passed in the EU treaties. The judiciary and the issue of its organization were not given over to the Union.”
