It’s not a first, but this time it’s definitive: the judicial control system in Poland has been condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In summary proceedings, the ultra-conservative PiS government has already been ordered to suspend its so-called “muzzle” law and ordered to pay a penalty payment which now amounts to more than 550 million euros. Initially, this penalty was set at one million euros per day, then was reduced to 500,000 euros per day on April 21. The sum is withheld from European funds.
In short, the PiS government, in power since 2015, had imposed on judges to declare their possible affiliation, even past, to an association, a non-profit foundation or a political party. Seized by the Commission, the CJEU rules that these provisions violate the protection of personal data and respect for privacy. Putting such data online is likely to expose magistrates to “risks of undue stigmatization”, writes the CJEU in its press release. In short, a judge is a citizen with full rights whose religious, philosophical or political convictions do not have to be revealed in spite of him.
The judges’ sanctions regime cannot be used to prevent national courts from asking the CJEU for a preliminary ruling. Polish law is therefore incompatible with guarantees of access to an independent and impartial tribunal.
This judgment comes in a tense political context in Poland. The electoral campaign is underway for the legislative elections in the fall. Mateusz Morawiecki’s government has also aroused opposition outrage by passing a law that purports to verify “Russian influence on public life between 2007 and 2022”. It is not the official purpose of this law that is criticized as its political aims. Dubbed “Lex Tusk”, the law appeared to target Donald Tusk, the former Prime Minister and former President of the European Council, accused by the PiS of having acted in the interests of Moscow by signing, in 2010, when he was in power, a supply contract with Gazprom.
