Polish Supreme Court chamber says rulings of other chamber “non-existent” due to illegitimate judges

Sep 25, 2025 | Law, Politics

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

In a further deepening of Poland’s rule-of-law crisis, one chamber of the Supreme Court has found that rulings issued by another of its chambers should be treated as “non-existent” due to the presence of illegitimate judges. The latter chamber is responsible, among other things, for validating election results.

The disputed body, known as the chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs, was created by the former Law and Justice (PiS) government as part of its contested overhaul of the judiciary.

Its legitimacy has previously been rejected by both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.

That is because the chamber is filled exclusively with judges nominated by the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), the body responsible for judicial nominations, after it was also overhauled by PiS in a manner deemed to have rendered it illegitimate due to it being under greater political influence.

On Wednesday, another part of the Supreme Court, its labour chamber, issued a resolution in response to a complaint brought by employees of a company that had been subject to a ruling by the extraordinary review chamber.

A panel of seven labour chamber judges – all of whom were appointed before the KRS was overhauled by PiS – found that a ruling issued with the participation of even one judge appointed by the reformed KRS should be regarded as “non-existent and as never having happened”.

In issuing its decision, the labour chamber referred to a ruling from earlier this month by the CJEU that confirmed the illegitimacy of the extraordinary review chamber and said that its judgments should be regarded as “null and void”.

“Courts must meet all requirements established at the EU level,” wrote the presiding judge, Dawid Miąsik, quoted by the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily. “An [extraordinary review chamber] panel that includes even one improperly appointed judge does not meet this requirement.”

 

Because all judges on the extraordinary review chamber were appointed after the overhaul of the KRS that rendered it illegitimate, Miąsik’s remarks effectively refer to all rulings the chamber has issued.

“Wherever we are dealing with a judgment of a non-court, a national court has the option of using this EU remedy,” said Miąsik. However, he added that, for now, “this remedy has rather narrowly defined boundaries…[and] concerns the court of last resort in a given country”.

Among the rulings issued by the extraordinary review chamber are ones confirming the validity of elections, including the 2023 parliamentary elections that saw PiS replaced in power by the current ruling coalition and this year’s presidential election that was won by PiS-backed candidate Karol Nawrocki.

Mikołaj Malecki, a legal scholar at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, commented that, although the “force of the [labour chamber’s] resolution is formally narrow”, it is possible to imagine the same principle being applied more broadly, including regarding rulings on the validity of elections.

Kamila Borszowska-Moszowska, a district court judge appointed after the KRS was overhauled by PiS, condemned the labour chamber’s resolution, saying that it was both legally unjustified and would result in “chaos”.

She noted that, under Poland’s constitution, it is the president who appoints judges (after they have been nominated by the KRS) and that the Supreme Court does not have the right to challenge such decisions nor to question the status of other courts.

A PiS MP, Krzysztof Szczucki, also condemned the labour chamber’s decision, saying that it was a further example of judges trying to “usurp the competencies of other bodies”.

However, the justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, welcomed the resolution, which he said confirmed the government’s position that “the chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs, in a composition that includes even one judge appointed by the neo-KRS, does not meet the criteria of a court within the meaning of EU law”.

When it came to power in 2023, the current government pledged to restore the rule of law and efficacy of the courts by reversing many of PiS’s judicial reforms. That has included proposing measures to deal with the roughly 2,500 judges at various levels nominated by the KRS after it was overhauled.

However, it has made little progress in that regard, in some cases due to opposition from former PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda but in many others because the coalition has not agreed on measures to put to parliament.

An opinion poll published last week found that the proportion of Poles who say they distrust their country’s courts has now risen to 57%, the highest level ever recorded and up from 41% when PiS left office in 2023.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Penn State University Libraries/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

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