The European Commission is to decide whether to unfreeze billions for Poland from the EU’s Reconstruction Fund. It should not ‘buy’ President Duda’s or the Law and Justice party’s (PiS’s) offer. It needs to demand the full restoration of the rule of law. Otherwise, it will condemn the courts to ultimate destruction, reward ‘sly judges’ and antagonise the judicial community.

A group of PiS MPs have submitted a bill to the Sejm which they claim will implement the CJEU ruling and unlock billions of euros for Poland. However, PiS does not want to liquidate the Disciplinary Chamber, but only take away its disciplinary cases regarding judges. PiS’s bill strikes at Duda’s initiative.

The Disciplinary Commissioner will be able to prosecute a judge who interprets that the Catholic Church is liable for the crime of paedophilia of its subordinates.  And this is just one of the possible dangers contained in the presidential bill.

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.

Just like the Prime Minister’s motion and the Constitutional Tribunal’s judgment of 7 October, the prosecutor general’s motion in case K 7/21 contains criticism of the European Court of Human Rights acts, that are nowhere to be found in the courts’ case law.

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.