Poland’s constitutional crisis reaches its climax

EU launches new case against government for
‘undermining judicial independence’ with Supreme Court overhaul

One-Minute Read

Under laws introduced earlier this year by the Polish
parliament, a mandatory retirement age of 65 will come into effect
today for all supreme court justices.

This would result in the immediate dismissal of 27 of the 74
judges currently serving on the court which, combined with plans to
expand its total number to 120, “would give the government the
power to appoint almost two-thirds of supreme court judges from
scratch” reports The Guardian.

Judges and opponents of the government argue the new law
threatens judicial independence. However, the government has vowed
to enforce the new legislation, potentially going as far as
blocking judges from entering the court building today.

One of those who could be barred is the president of the supreme
court, Małgorzata Gersdorf, whose six-year term is not scheduled to
end until 2020.

She told the Guardian: “It doesn’t happen in well-developed
countries that the executive and the legislative branches destroy
the judiciary. With no guarantees of basic freedoms, the
fundamental rights of Polish citizens will be destroyed sooner or
later.”

The judges can have their mandate extended on application to the
president of Poland, “which has raised fears of undue political
influence over the court” says the Daily Telegraph.

Al Jazeera says the passage of the law today
“is only the most recent in a string of attacks on the Polish
judiciary since PiS took power in 2015”, including new restrictions
limiting the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal, the
fast-tracking of appointments of party-affiliated judges and the
use of state funds to smear judges on billboards.

But the legislation has drawn particularly fierce opposition
from within Poland with huge protests planned for this week.

It has also drawn the ire of the European Commission which has
announced it intends to take the Polish government to the European Court of
Justice on the grounds that “these measures undermine the
principle of judicial independence”.

It is just the latest step in an increasingly acrimonious
relationship between the Polish government and the EU. In December
last year, amid fears of Poland’s drift towards authoritarianism, the
Commission triggered Article 7, a legal process that could
strip Poland of its EU voting rights, for the first time in the
bloc’s history.