Justice minister says Supreme Court chief violating law by partially freezing disciplinary chamber

As an internal conflict over Poland’s disputed disciplinary chamber for judges intensifies, the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, has accused the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Małgorzata Manowska, of violating the law and the constitution by partially suspending the body.

Last week, Manowska ordered the chamber not to accept new cases. That marked an apparent reversal from her previous stance, when she had indicated she saw no reason to comply with an order from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to suspend the chamber.

Likewise, although a government spokesman had initially indicated Warsaw was “not planning” to implement recent CJEU rulings, there has subsequently been a change of tone, with the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, and ruling party chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński, both hinting at compromise with Brussels.

Ziobro, however, who is leader of a hard-right, Eurosceptic junior partner in the ruling coalition, has remained opposed to any form of compliance with the CJEU rulings. “EU aggression should be met with a tough response,” he said last week, warning that Poland should not remain in the bloc “at any price”.

The justice minister has also now hit out at Manowska, who previously served him as a deputy minister and was appointed to lead the Supreme Court last year in controversial circumstances.

In a statement posted on his ministry’s website, Ziobro accused the chief justice of “taking actions contrary to Polish law, both statutory and constitutional”, by “blocking the work of the disciplinary chamber”.

He noted that a ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal – a body also seen as being under government influence – last month stated Poland could ignore CJEU interim rulings relating to its judiciary.

The Supreme Court should therefore reject “unlawful interference by EU organs”, wrote ZIobro, who suggested that Manowska had given in to “threats and pressure from foreign institutions and politicised parts of the judicial community and media”.

In two rulings issued last month, the CJEU found that Poland’s disciplinary chamber – which was established in 2017 – violates European law and should be suspended in its entirety.

While the government initially dismissed the rulings, PiS later announced that it had prepared legislation to “in a sense meet the expectations of the [CJEU]”, though it remains unclear exactly to what extent they will do so.

“We want to be in the EU…so we have to reach an agreement,” said Morawiecki last week. In an interview published over the weekend, Kaczyński – who is Poland’s de facto leader – declared that the disciplinary chamber “will be liquidated in its current form and the dispute [with the EU] will thus disappear”.

Speaking to the Rzeczpospolita daily last week, Ziobro was asked if he would leave the government if it accepted the CJEU rulings. “There are limits to compromise,” he answered, and noted that there are “fundamental differences in view between me and Mateusz Morawiecki” on this issue.

Main image credit: Katarzyna Czerwińska / Kancelaria Senatu (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.