This year will be crucial for Poland’s place in the EU. The most important decisions will be made in Warsaw. They will determine the parameters of not only Poland’s policy in the EU, but also its national policy for a long time. The dispute over integration will become its inseparable dimension.

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.

Step by step, the neo-judges are taking control over the old, legal Supreme Court. The First President of the Supreme Court, Małgorzata Manowska, has just dismissed all the heads of division in the Civil Chamber. Manowska is also blocking the implementation of a CJEU ruling regarding the legality of the Supreme Court’s neo-judges

The purchase of the Pegasus system with funding from the Justice Fund was an operation that was planned precisely by the Ministry of Justice and the Anti-Corruption Bureau; it was camouflaged at every stage, writes ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ on Monday.

They were most probably afraid of the recording of Jarosław Kaczyński and Gerald Birgfellner as the latter handed Jarosław Kaczyński 50,000 zlotys in an envelope – this is what Roman Giertych says in a special recording about the reasons for using the Pegasus program against him. “From what experts at the University of Toronto told me, this was the most aggressive use of Pegasus they had observed,” he said.

by  Piotr Żytnicki    The courts have believed police officers uncritically for years, but that may change. In Poznań, a student who was convicted after the Women’s Strike solely on the basis of the testimony of two undercover cops was acquitted.   Not many court justifications have the chance of going down in history – […]

The reorganisation planned for January is to give the neo-judges full control over the Civil Chamber. Its result will be that old judges will lose the managerial positions of the divisions and neo-judges will take their place. The names in line for ‘promotion’ include Kamil Zaradkiewicz.

The Polish politically captured Constitutional Tribunal ruled in case K 6 /21 that it is not a court within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights. It also ruled that the European Court of Human Rights cannot judge the legality of judicial appointments. We publish argumentation presented in the case before the Constitutional Tribunal by the Commissioner for Human Rights.

Judge Maciej Rutkiewicz was suspended for a month for applying the CJEU judgment and the Supreme Court resolution. He was suspended by a nominee of Minister Ziobro. Rutkiewicz is the sixth judge in Poland suspended for applying EU law and in clear violation of the CJEU order

‘The authorities will try to use the carrot-and-stick method: a stick for those judges who are fighting for the rule of law, and a carrot for those they try to persuade over to them,’ believes Judge Waldemar Żurek. We discuss scenarios of further changes in courts and judges’ reactions to them