The European Commission, together with some of the elected members of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE), once again painted a worrying picture of the situation of the rule of law in Poland on Thursday 23 April.
A few days after a decision by the Constitutional Court questioned the application of EU Court of Justice rulings on Polish law (see EUROPE 12471/14), a "serious" sign indicating that the "primacy of European law over national law is under threat", as S&D President Juan Lopez Aguilar said, elected representatives wanted to hear precisely from Didier Reynders.
The Commissioner for Justice has expressed a whole range of concerns about the ongoing developments in the country. He began by recalling that all decisions of the European Court of Justice had "binding and immediate" effect in the country concerned. It thus welcomed the order of the President of the Polish Supreme Court to the new Disciplinary Chamber to cease all its activities pending the Court's final ruling on the new disciplinary regime. At the beginning of the month, the Court granted the Commission's request for the immediate suspension of these measures (see EUROPE 12464/27).
The effect of European court decisions cannot be questioned on the basis of "national law or decisions of the Constitutional Court", the Commissioner said.
Didier Reynders also pointed out that the Commission was about to complete its evaluation of the new Polish law on the judicial system and that a "political decision" within the College would soon be taken. This law, adopted in January, develops disciplinary sanctions and has been of concern to the Commission since December (see EUROPE 12411/14).
But the Commissioner also expressed concern about the change of 'head' at the Supreme Court. With the term of the current president coming to April 30, the country's president has provided for an acting president to be appointed to select candidates to succeed her. "These developments are a source of grave concern and we will be watching closely, as the Supreme Court is the last bastion" of judicial independence, the Commissioner said.
Didier Reynders also spoke of keeping the presidential election on 10 May, in the midst of the pandemic. While member states are completely free to decide whether to maintain or postpone their elections, they must be held under the fairest and most equitable conditions possible and Council of Europe guidelines exist on this subject, he reiterated on this subject which he had already discussed the previous day with the Ministers for European Affairs.
Also invited to speak, the Polish Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, dismissed all the concerns raised about the independence of the judiciary and gave a particularly accurate account of the reasons why the PiS party had to reform the Polish judicial system as soon as it came to power in 2015.
According to the minister, these reforms were imposed after cases of "judges who had caused fatal road accidents while under the influence of alcohol" and who had "not been convicted for these acts" by their counterparts.
There have also been cases of "judges stealing from supermarkets". Again, these judges were not convicted of their "offences" nor were they dismissed from office.
All these cases have contributed to a major problem of "public confidence" in the Polish judicial system, which therefore needed to be reformed in order to raise the standards of "ethics and professionalism" of judges, which is "in line" with European values.
Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany) criticised the argument as "not answering the questions at all" and was even considered inappropriate by some MEPs, such as Clare Daly (GUE/NGL, Ireland), who was shocked that justice reforms were being justified on the grounds of "drunkenness" of some judges or robberies in supermarkets. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)