Poland fined €1 million a day by EU for not suspending disciplinary chamber for judges

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has imposed a fine of €1 million (4.6 million zloty) per day on Poland until it complies with a ruling to suspend its disciplinary chamber for judges, as ordered by the same court earlier this year.

“Compliance…is necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law,” concluded the CJEU order. In response, a Polish minister accused the court of “abusing” its powers to undermine Polish sovereignty.

The decision heightens a growing conflict between Warsaw and Brussels over the rule of law and a number of other issues. Poland is already being fined €500,000 a day for failing to respect a separate CJEU ruling requiring it to close a coal mine on the border with the Czech Republic.

Today’s decision by the CJEU comes in response to a request last month from the European Commission, which noted that Poland had not complied with the interim order to suspend the disciplinary chamber. The Polish government, meanwhile, lodged an application for the order to be cancelled altogether.

Today, CJEU Vice President Lars Bay Larsen rejected Poland’s claim and accepted that of the commission.

“He considers it necessary to strengthen the effectiveness of the interim measures by providing for the imposition of a periodic penalty payment in order to deter [Poland] from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order,” said the court.

After the ruling was issued, deputy justice minister Sebastian Kaleta accused the CJEU of “completely disregarding and ignoring the Polish constitution and the judgements of the Constitutional Tribunal”.

The court is “operating outside its competences” and “abusing the institution of financial penalties and interim measures”, tweeted Kaleta. This, he claimed, is “the next stage of an operation to remove from Poland influence over the system of our state”.

The disciplinary chamber’s spokesman, meanwhile, said that it does not intend to change its activities in any way as a result of today’s ruling. “Until there are legislative changes [from Poland’s parliament], nothing will change,” he told Wirtualna Polska. “Judges will perform their constitutional duties.”

Today’s ruling is the latest development in a long-running dispute over the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court, which was created by the Polish government in 2017 as part of judicial policies that have been found by a range of domestic and international bodies to have violated the rule of law.

In 2019, the Supreme Court itself found that the chamber is “not a court within the meaning of EU and national law”. The following year, the CJEU ordered Poland to suspend the new disciplinary regime, including cases already before the chamber.

However, the chamber continued to operate, and in July this year the CJEU ordered it to be fully suspended as an interim measure. The following day, the EU court also ruled that the disciplinary system for judges created in 2017 violated European law and should be “rectified without delay”.

Simultaneously, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal – a body widely regarded as being under the influence of the ruling party and which has been found to not be a “tribunal established by law” by the European Court of Human Rights – issued a verdict stating that interim orders by the CJEU relating to Poland’s judiciary violate the Polish constitution.

Earlier this month, the tribunal further found that parts of the European treaties are incompatible with the Polish constitution and that “EU bodies are acting outside the powers conferred on them”. That ruling was seen by some experts as effectively marking Poland’s departure from the EU’s legal order.

Poland’s government has indicated that it plans to respond to the CJEU’s July rulings by scrapping the disciplinary chamber entirely, though as part of a wide set of judicial “reforms” to take place this autumn. As yet, however, it has not outlined details of those changes.

In a letter to the European Commission in August, Poland said that, while no new cases were being accepted by the chamber, the government could not intervene to stop ongoing proceedings.

Since then, tensions with Brussels have increased further, with the European Commission withholding coronavirus recovery funds for Poland until it is confident that they will be disbursed with respect for EU law. It has also suspended other funds due to anti-LGBT resolutions introduced in some Polish provinces.

Last week, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, condemned the EU for holding a “gun to our head” over funds, which he warned could start “the third world war”. He pledged that his government would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal”.

Main image credit: Transparency International EU Office/Flickr (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.