Warsaw dismissed the charges, ruling that they were “no legal or factual basis “.
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The European Commission seized on Wednesday March 31 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against a Polish law deemed undermining the independence of judges. The announcement is a new offensive against judicial reforms in Warsaw, which immediately challenged this procedure.
This referral to European justice comes within the framework of an infringement procedure launched in April 2020 against a Polish law that entered into force in February of the same year, making it possible to sanction judges who question the reforms of the justice system, accused of “muzzle law” by its detractors.
The justice reforms launched by the conservative nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power in Poland since 2015, are in the crosshairs of Brussels and have already given rise to several condemnations by European justice.
According to the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, the legislation in question “undermines judicial independence in Poland and is incompatible with the rule of Union law”. The EU executive has asked Poland to take “provisional measures”, in particular to suspend the decisions of the disciplinary chamber of the Polish Supreme Court on the lifting of the immunity of judges, he said.
Today we took an important decision for the protection of the independence of judges.
We decided to refer Poland to the EU Court of Justice.
Commissioner @dreynders pic.twitter.com/FrwVMEg3Y6
– European Commission (@EU_Commission) March 31, 2021
Warsaw ruled that this referral had “no legal or factual basis”. “The regulation of questions related to the judicial system is exclusively a national matter”Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said on Twitter, assuring that “Polish regulations do not differ from standards in force in the EU”.
