by Agnieszka Matłacz

What follows is a translation of an article published in Polish at Prawo.pl website on 15 May 2020.

The General Assembly of Supreme Court Judges is unable to select candidates for the position of first president of the Supreme Court. After several days of disputes over the method in which the proceedings of the General Assembly of Judges were handled, it was interrupted indefinitely. The acting president of the Supreme Court, Kamil Zaradkiewicz, who was chairing the assembly, requested the president to change the rules of the Supreme Court.

Kaczyński was asked in Program 1 of Polskie Radio [Polish Radio] about this situation and the communist past of some of the Supreme Court judges and hence their qualifications for holding the post of the new president of the Supreme Court. Judge Tomasz Artymiuk was highlighted as an example.

“Everyone sees it how it is. And this is not just about Judge Artymuk and it is not only about those judges who were active in the previous system. This is about the attitude of these judges in general and what has been happening recently with the inability to choose candidates for the office of first president of the Supreme Court. This shows the current quality of this institution,” Kaczyński answered.

“If someone wants to draw conclusions from this, and conclusions should be drawn from these things, there can be only one conclusion. This institution needs to be radically changed, including in personal terms. And this is the only thing that arises from what is happening there right now. Because the judicial community and especially the Supreme Court should be a model of civic virtues,” added the PiS chairman, pointing out that his comment does not apply to all judges, but – as he pointed out – a substantial proportion of them.

Translated by Roman Wojtasz