Poland has announced that it will give in in the ongoing dispute with the EU and wants to abolish its controversial institution for disciplining judges.
"We will dissolve the disciplinary chamber in its current form and this will also make this issue disappear," said Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Saturday to the PAP news agency.
The head of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) is considered to be the real strong man in Poland.
The disciplinary chamber set up at the country's Supreme Court in 2018 was considered to be the heart of the controversial reforms of the Polish judicial system of the national-conservative PiS government. The chamber can dismiss any judge or public prosecutor. Critics fear that it could serve to reprimand judges for insubordinate decisions. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in mid-July that the disciplinary body violated EU law because it “does not offer all guarantees of impartiality and independence”. At the same time, the ECJ Poland set a deadline of mid-August to implement the decision. Otherwise fines would have threatened.
In an interview with the PAP news agency, Kaczynski initially defended the judicial reform against allegations from the EU and rejected the judgment. "I do not recognize such judgments," he said. The EU Court of Justice exceeded its competences by interfering in national sovereign rights. Kaczynski said the disciplinary body should be dissolved anyway according to the plans of the Polish Ministry of Justice. That was already discussed before the ECJ ruling.
Previously, the President of the Supreme Court in Poland, Malgorzata Manowska, had already released the disciplinary body from some tasks. The chamber should therefore no longer be transferred to new disciplinary proceedings by judges or prosecutors, as PAP reported on Friday. The European Union has been arguing with Warsaw over judicial reforms by the national-conservative government for years. The EU Commission has already initiated several infringement proceedings.