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The highest judicial authority in the European Union has ordered Poland to suspend the purge of the country's supreme court, intensifying the battle over the rule of law that divided Europe between East and West Where is.
The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, said on Friday that Poland had to postpone the application of a law that came into force earlier this year demanding the early retirement of nearly 40% of the court's judges. Poland could be fined if it did not comply with its obligations, but such a measure would pose an unprecedented threat to the authority of the supreme tribunal of the bloc.
Retired Polish judges must be allowed to return to work, the ruling said. The law that rejected them poses a "real risk of serious and irreparable harm" to the rights of Poles who appear in court, the ECJ said in its provisional judgment. There could be legal confusion in Poland if multiple local and foreign courts had different views on the legitimate judges of the Supreme Court.
The decision is only temporary and, in the coming months, the Luxembourg court will hear the arguments of the Polish government, which has stated that it is necessary to lower the retirement age in order to withdraw the last communist sympathizers from its judicial system. About eight of the 110 seats in the court are occupied by judges who served under communism.
The European Commission, the EU executive, will also argue, saying that these changes violate Poland's constitution and threaten the political independence of its judicial system.
The law has provoked protests in major Polish cities by protesters who feel that the country's ruling nationalist-conservative party is eroding the checks and balances of Polish democracy and strengthening the political control of the judiciary.
The ministry is already seeking to bring dozens of new judges to court: an official candidacy, divulged to the Polish media, contains barely three pages of basic questions about the date of birth and citizenship.
The struggle has become a highlight between Poland – the largest and most European Eastern flank in Europe – and EU leaders, who fear that democratic values will be under siege on the continent. continent. Both Hungary and Romania have adopted controversial laws giving the ruling parties of their country the power to dismiss judges or prosecutors.
A separate legal opinion released Friday by the Venice Commission, an international panel of constitutional judges, said the recent amendments to anti-corruption legislation in Romania "would significantly weaken the effectiveness of its criminal justice system in combating corruption offenses, violent crimes and organized crime ".
In Poland, it was unclear whether the government would obey the order of the ECJ. In a brief statement, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the press that the government would analyze the decision before reacting. The country's Ministry of Justice did not immediately answer the questions.
"It's a problem," said Marcin Matczak, professor of legal theory at the University of Warsaw. "If they accept the decision of the ECJ, their electorate, which is anti-EU, might find it unpleasant. On the other hand, they can not ignore it because they have to appeal to the center that is pro-EU. "
Last year, the Polish authorities first resisted the court's interim decision to ban logging in a US-protected forest. They finally obeyed the order when the court ruled definitively at the beginning of the year that logging was in violation of EU laws.
