Tag: judges

by Oktawia Kromer, Gazeta Wyborcza   Judge Agnieszka Brygidyr-Dorosz sentenced activist Justyna Wydrzyńska to eight months of community service on 14 March for helping to terminate a pregnancy. That same day, she received a secondment to the Court of Appeal in Warsaw by order of Minister Ziobro.   Judge Brygidyr-Dorosz announced her promotion on Wednesday […]

The new presidents of the Poznań courts had not been promoted for years; they had low appraisals, they made mistakes that were sometimes so embarrassing as sentencing innocent people. Now Ziobro is giving them a huge amount of power. The judges have been stirred up.

‘It’s beneath me to comment on Ziobro’s words that “officials from Brussels want to incapacitate Poland”,’ says Supreme Court Judge Krzysztof Rączka.

The President has given high promotions to judges associated with Minister Ziobro, members of the illegal NCJ and the partner of the head of the neo-NCJ. At the same time, independent judges are experiencing further repressions. This shows how the President and the PiS authorities will implement the compromise with the EU in practice.

 Igor Tuleya, a symbol of the free courts, filed a complaint with the ECtHR because the court presidents nominated by Ziobro are not implementing the judgments ordering his return to work. Tuleya will also request a fine of PLN 15,000 and the arrest of the minister’s nominee

The declaration of the 30 judges of the Supreme Court is a strong message addressed to all judges in Poland. The judges of the Supreme Court show that the judgments of the CJEU and the ECtHR and the historic resolution of the full panel of the Supreme Court that challenged the neo-NCJ and the neo-judges it nominated should be implemented.

The temporary Chamber of Professional Liability assessed the decision of the Minister of Justice to suspend an independent judge for the first time. And held that Zbigniew Ziobro had groundlessly suspended Judge Marzanna Piekarska-Drążek for applying CJEU and ECtHR rulings

‘This is a show of contempt for the work we do. The authorities are proving that they can do anything they like with a judge,’ commented Judge Marzanna Piekarska-Drążek of the Court of Appeal in Warsaw in an interview with Onet on the decision to move her to the labour and social insurance division after 30 years of adjudicating in the criminal division. On Monday, after returning from her holiday, she found out that she is to work in a completely different place from next week.

If you are a Polish judge and you intend to apply European standards on judicial independence, think twice. You are facing suspension, as well as disciplinary and criminal proceedings. Either the end of your career or, at best, a long and unpleasant break. This is the situation in Poland, a European Union Member State, at the dawn of the 21st century.

Never before have the judges in Europe been so unified and united,’ says Monika Frąckowiak, judge of the District Court in Poznań.