The new European Commission is not opposed to the possibility of requesting that the EU Court of Justice take further transitional suspension measures against the recent Polish provisions on the composition of the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court. This path was opened on Monday evening, 16 December, by the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, during a debate with MEPs of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) on the situation of the rule of law in Poland.
Promising to analyse very carefully the latest measures launched by the ruling PiS government against judges, he recalled that the Commission had already requested transitional measures during the reform process concerning the retirement age for Polish Supreme Court judges, and that this avenue could therefore be further explored for the most recent announcements.
During this exchange of views with MEPs, the Commissioner stated that the situation in Poland under the Article 7 procedure, launched by his predecessor Frans Timmermans in December 2017, had not progressed in recent months and had even “deteriorated”. In his introductory statement, the European Commissioner listed a series of decisions that were all problematic, such as the disciplinary procedure launched a few days ago against the president of the country’s largest judges’ association on the grounds that he had challenged the government’s plans for the composition of the disciplinary chamber. On 12 December, the government again created “new offences” in the disciplinary regime for judges and new procedures for suspending the term of office of the Chief Justice, which will end in April 2020, explained Didier Reynders.
Before him, the LIBE Committee MEPs expressed their concern about the turn of events in the country, while media attention has turned more in recent weeks to the Article 7 procedure against Hungary and the two hearings conducted by the Finnish Presidency of the EU Council.
According to Slovak MEP Michal Šimečka (Renew Europe), it is “obvious that the situation is deteriorating”, with “unbelievable” things happening in the country, such as campaigns to intimidate judges and their families. To this elected official, the situation has attained new degrees of severity.
German Socialist MEP Birgit Sippel came back to the country’s ‘LGTBI-free zones’, which will be voted on in plenary this week, also asserting that we need to move to another level of debate and that what is on the table, such as “financial conditionality”, is no longer enough. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)