The EU Court of Justice refused on Thursday 26 March to act on two requests for preliminary rulings concerning the Polish measures of 2017 establishing a system of disciplinary proceedings against judges.
Since it was unable to give a ruling, the Court nevertheless established that, despite that inadmissibility, those requests for preliminary rulings should not lead to the opening of penalty proceedings against the judges who had submitted them.
The Court actually judged two Polish cases at the same time: the cases of Miasto Łowicz and Prokurator Generalny.
The first case (C‑558/18) related to a dispute between the city of Łowicz (Poland) and the State Treasury concerning a claim for payment of public grants. The court which referred the case stated that it was likely that the decision it would have to give in the case would be unfavourable to the public purse, the Court explained.
The second case (C-563/18) concerned criminal proceedings against three persons for offences committed in 2002 and 2003, in which the referring judge was required to consider granting them extraordinary mitigation of sentence because they cooperated with the criminal authorities by acknowledging the acts complained of.
The two requests for preliminary rulings were brought because the two judges feared they would be prosecuted on the basis of their decisions, due to recent controversial legislative reforms by the ruling PiS party against judges considered ‘critical’ of it. These reforms also led the European Commission to open infringement proceedings against Warsaw and to request urgent measures from the Court (see EUROPE 12403/23). The Court also said in a release that these reforms “would give the legislative and executive branches a means of removing judges whose decisions are unwelcome to them” and could therefore affect the independence of the courts.
While the Court considered itself competent to deal with the general context of these requests, it noted that the preliminary ruling procedure “presupposes that a dispute is actually pending before the national courts, in the context of which they are called upon to take account of the preliminary judgment”. Since the purpose of the Court of Justice is to assist the court which referred the case in resolving the specific pending dispute, it must have a connecting factor between that dispute and the provisions of Union law whose interpretation is sought.
However, the Court found that the disputes in the main proceedings had no connection with Union law. The Court also indicated that its reply to these questions did not appear likely to be able to assist the courts which referred the cases in deciding their questions. The Court nevertheless indicated that “it is not acceptable for national provisions to expose national judges to disciplinary proceedings because they have submitted a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court”.
Article 267 TFEU gives national courts and tribunals the widest possible discretion to bring actions before the Court if they consider that a case pending before them raises questions requiring an interpretation or assessment as to the validity of the provisions of Union law essential to the resolution of the dispute.
National courts are free to exercise this option at any stage of the proceedings. “A rule of national law cannot therefore prevent a national court from making use of that option, which is inherent in the system of cooperation between the national courts and the Court”.
See the Court’s judgment: https://bit.ly/39n8ngN (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)