In a ruling published on Monday 8 November, the European Court of Human Rights has once again condemned Poland in a case concerning the reform of the Polish judiciary which was launched in 2017.
Fifty-seven applications were lodged in 2018-2021 as a result of this highly controversial reorganisation, the fourth to be decided by the ECHR, which on each occasion, found in favour of the applicants.
It concerns two judges - Monika Dolińska-Ficek and Artur Ozimek - who applied for judicial posts without being recommended by the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ). They lodged appeals with the Supreme Court in 2018 and these were considered by the “Chamber of Extraordinary Review and Public Affairs”, one of the two new chambers created under the reform and composed solely of judges appointed through a procedure involving the NJC. Their appeals were rejected in 2019.
In its judgment - not final - delivered unanimously by a chamber of seven judges after “ third-party submissions” by the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Commission of Jurists, the Strasbourg Court found that “the procedure for appointing judges had been unduly influenced by the legislative and executive powers”, that amounts to “ a fundamental irregularity that adversely affected the whole process and compromised the legitimacy of the Chamber of Extraordinary Review and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court”, which is therefore not “an independent and impartial tribunal established by law within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights”.
As a result, Poland was ordered to pay 15,000 euros to each of the applicants for “non-pecuniary damage “, a large sum in accordance with its case law. It also has a legal obligation to “put an end to the violation found by the Court” and to “redress the situation”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)