New episode in the dispute between Brussels and Warsaw concerning the independence of the judiciary. Wednesday, October 27, Poland was condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to pay the European Commission a fine of one million euros per day. Warsaw has not put an end to the activities of the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, which, according to the EU, seriously threatens the independence of the judiciary in Poland. According to Warsaw, these reforms, implemented in 2017, are necessary to eradicate corruption within the justice system.
On July 15, the CJEU ordered Poland to immediately cease the activities of this chamber. This decision not having been respected, the European executive had asked the CJEU to impose sanctions, considering that “The EU’s judicial systems must be independent and fair”. “Compliance with the provisional measures ordered on July 14 is necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable damage to the legal order of the European Union as well as to the values on which this Union is founded, in particular that of the State of law “, declared the CJEU, based in Luxembourg, in a press release.
Increased tensions
The head of the Polish nationalist conservative government, Mateusz Morawiecki, has pledged to abolish the disciplinary chamber, the abolition of which had already been announced in August by Warsaw but which continues to function.
This lack of independence of the Polish judiciary and the primacy of European law over national law was one of the dominant topics of the European summit of the Twenty-Seven at the end of last week. Tensions had indeed increased since October 7. On that day, the Polish Constitutional Court declared certain articles of the European treaties incompatible with the national Constitution. A decision denounced by Brussels as an unprecedented attack on the primacy of European law and the jurisdiction of the CJEU.