On July 15, the Court of Justice of the EU will issue a judgment on measures establishing a disciplinary regime for judges (C-791/19).
This is a case initiated by the European Commission, which found that the new disciplinary regime for judges in Poland undermines their independence and does not provide the necessary guarantees to protect them from political control. In April 2019 the Commission initiated proceedings against Poland, and on 10 October 2019 filed a complaint with the CJEU.
In the opinion of the Commission, the system of disciplinary measures introduced by PiS does not ensure the independence and impartiality of the Disciplinary Chamber operating at the Supreme Court, composed only of persons appointed by the neoKRS, elected by the Sejm in a political procedure, and not by the judges as it was before.
In May this year, the Advocate General of the CJEU, Evgeni Tanchev, issued an opinion in this case, in which he recommended the Court to issue a ruling that Polish legislation on the disciplinary regime for judges is contrary to EU law.
It was in this case that on April 8, 2020, the CJEU suspended the operation of the Disciplinary Chamber, which does not guarantee the independence and impartiality. However, the illegal Chamber ignores the interim measures applied by the CJEU. In its opinion the interim measures apply only to proceedings concerning disciplinary liability of judges. As a result the Chamber does not hear these cases, but at the same time deals with cases of much more serious ailment, i.e. lifting the immunity of a judge.
Among other things, due to the fact that Poland does not implement the interim measures and allows the functioning of the illegal Disciplinary Chamber, the European Commission has recently requested for further interim measures, bringing another complaint against Poland to the CJEU.