The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that Polish courts are obliged to disapply the resolutions of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court, a body that is illegal under EU law, in a judgment handed down on Thursday 13 July (joined cases C-615/20 and C-671/20) (see EUROPE 13085/35).
Judge I.T. of the Warsaw Regional Court asked the CJEU whether EU law precludes the Disciplinary Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court from waiving the criminal immunity of judges of ordinary courts and suspending them from their duties. The Disciplinary Chamber had adopted a resolution to this effect against this judge, and this decision led to the initiation of criminal proceedings against him, during which I.T. sent a preliminary question to the CJEU. Other cases handled by Judge I.T. had been reassigned to other panels.
The chamber has since been abolished and, in June, was found to be contrary to EU law (case C-204/21, see EUROPE 13194/13).
The CJEU recalls the primacy of EU law is the direct effect of this judgment. It emphasises that the Polish courts are obliged to respect European case-law and to draw all the consequences from it, even in the absence of national legislative measures.
More specifically, the Polish courts must disapply the resolution of the Disciplinary Chamber of Polish judges where that is essential in the light of the procedural situation at issue in order to guarantee the primacy of Union law, without that being precluded by any consideration based on the principle of legal certainty or linked to the alleged finality of a decision.
With regard to legal certainty, the Court notes that the criminal proceedings initiated in Poland in Cases C-615/20 and C-671/20 were suspended pending the present judgment, so that there appears to be nothing to prevent the resumption of those proceedings by Judge I.T.
Consequently, the Court concluded, EU law requires that the Polish judge be able to continue to exercise jurisdiction in the criminal proceedings before him and that the case be reassigned back to him.
See the Court’s judgment (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/81w (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)