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Judges’ organizations appeal approval of Poland EU funds

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Four leading European judges’ organizations on Sunday filed a lawsuit against the EU Council before the bloc’s top court to cancel the approval of Covid recovery funds for Poland.

The Council approved funds worth 35.4 billion euros ($35.3 billion) in June despite criticisms against Warsaw for flouting judicial independence.

Brussels had set Poland three conditions, which the judges associations say did not go far enough and ignored earlier rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

The EU requires Poland to dismantle the Supreme Court’s controversial disciplinary chamber and replace it with an independent court; to reform the disciplinary regime; and to allow sanctioned judges reviews of their cases.

The organisations said in a statement that the conditions “fall short of what is required to ensure effective protection of the independence of judges and the judiciary” and disregard the ECJ judgements.

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Their lawsuit, lodged with the ECJ, aims to establish the principle that the court’s rulings on judicial independence should be implemented fully and without delay.

“The goal of the lawsuit is to establish the above-mentioned principle and to prevent a Commission decision to unblock EU funds for Poland until the CJEU judgements are fully and completely enforced,” said their joint statement, referring to the ECJ by its French acronym.

A ‘spillover effect’

The legal action is to prevent the European Commission unblocking the funds until the judgments are fully enforced, the plaintiffs added.

Their position is that the council’s conditions harmed the position of suspended judges in Poland.

The ECJ had ruled that Polish judges “affected by unlawful disciplinary procedures” be reinstated immediately. But the Council’s third condition “would introduce a procedure of more than a year with an uncertain outcome”.

The entire European judiciary was “undeniably affected” because not guaranteeing independence or rule-of-law principles would produce a “spillover effect”, the statement added.

The organisations behind the legal action are the Association of European Administrative Judges, the European Association of Judges, Judges for Judges and MEDEL.

Poland’s pandemic recovery funds had been held up for more than a year due to a controversial judicial reform.

In July, the European Commission had said that new legislation by Poland dismantling the previous law on disciplining judges was not enough to lift financial penalties imposed on Warsaw by the ECJ.

It had been imposing a daily fine of one million euros (1$ million) on Poland since November 3 last year because of the old legislation.

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