The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Tuesday that successive amendments to a Polish law regulating the work of the National Council of the Judiciary panel could infringe EU law.
“Where an infringement has been proved, the principle of the primacy of EU law requires the national court to disapply such amendments,” the court said.
Poland’s Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, one of the main architects of the government’s judiciary reforms, said in a comment that the European court was overstepping its mandate and that its ruling was “unacceptable.”
He added that the Polish constitution “is the law of the highest rank,” not European law.
The judgement “goes beyond the European treaties and, in this sense, also violates them,” Ziobro stated, amid a protracted row over legal changes in his country.
He also argued that “the role of the court is not to create a political process” and that the EU court “has openly stepped out of its role.”
The top EU court in April last year ordered Poland to immediately suspend a disciplinary chamber within its Supreme Court that critics have said could punish judges for their decisions.
(gs/pk)
Source: PAP, Reuters, curia.europa.eu
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