Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro wants to remove the legal judges from the Supreme Court. The current Supreme Court is to be liquidated under the guise of implementing a CJEU ruling, to be replaced by a small Supreme Court with only 30 vetted judges. This radical plan is in conflict with Duda’s and PiS’s bills.

The Kraków judges have an uphill struggle. A special department has been formed. According to the president of the Regional Court – not against them. They, however, are of a different opinion.

Our proposal justly differentiates the situations of judges who knowingly chose promotion, while other boycotted defective recruitments – argue lawyers from the Free Courts initiative Michał Wawrykiewicz, Paulina Kieszkowska-Knapik, Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram, Maria Ejchart-Dubois

A member of the government removes a judge from adjudicating during a court session, forcing the stoppage of adjudication. Such situations did not even arise under martial law.

Support from a part of the opposition for the presidential bill for revitalising the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court would, among other things, be in conflict with the recently concluded Agreement for the Rule of Law. And in conflict with the rulings of the European courts – in Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

The reform of disciplinary proceedings is to involve the – repeatedly announced – liquidation of the Disciplinary Chamber and the establishment of a new Chamber, the Professional Liability Chamber. The judges of what has been the Disciplinary Chamber to date are to be parcelled out to other chambers, which means they will be dominated by neo-judges. Well, unless they choose to retire – on very financially-attractive terms.

Almost all judges – members of the old, legal National Council of Judiciary (Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, KRS), which was dissolved by PiS, have signed an appeal to the authorities to implement the ECtHR and CJEU judgments. They are appealing to the authorities to appoint an NCJ which is consistent with the Constitution. They are also appealing to judges to boycott recruitment for the second term of office of the neo-NCJ.

The National Prosecutor’s Office wants to strike at the president of the association of judges, Iustitia. Krystian Markiewicz is facing criminal charges for his statements to OKO.press, in which he talks about the need to implement CJEU rulings. The prosecutor’s office wants OKO.press to hand over materials that are subject to secrecy.

Judge Agnieszka Niklas-Bibik from Słupsk is the first Polish judge suspended for asking preliminary questions to the CJEU. She was also repressed for enforcing judgments of the ECtHR and the CJEU. The judge was suspended by the president of the Słupsk court, appointed by Zbigniew Ziobro

The Committee on Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences: the ruling  of the Constitutional Tribunal in case K 3/21 of October 7, 2021 is defective due to the faulty appointment of judges and aims to legalize unconstitutional changes introduced in the administration of justice after 2015 which are inconsistent with EU law and the European Convention