Resolution 1

The Assembly of the Representatives of Judges of the Regional Court in Kraków expresses its indignation at the course of the procedure in which the body described as the National Council of the Judiciary gives its opinion on candidates to offices of appellate and regional court judge, as well as Supreme Court judge. During the proceedings before that body, the membership of which was chosen in gross breach of Article 187, para. 1 of the Constitution, no account is taken of the opinions of the councils and the assemblies of the respective courts, the assessments of the inspectors or the adjudicating history or statistical results of the candidates. The fact that the candidates are appraised according to non-professional criteria gives rise to the reasonable suspicion that the choice is made according to the key of loyalty to the executive. The pseudo-appraisal conducted in this procedure not only promotes people who do not satisfy the criteria for being promoted to courts of a higher instance, but also harms reliable and diligent judges and carries a substantial risk of breaching the right to a fair hearing, as referred to in Article 45 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, Article 6 of the ECHR, and Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which, in combination with the series of unconstitutional changes in the law, will lead to a significant reduction in the level of protection of civil rights and freedoms.

Resolution 2

We critically assess the approach to the Constitutional Tribunal planned by the National Council of the Judiciary to legitimise its own existence. As both of these bodies have been increasing the state of lawlessness in Poland for a number of months through their activities, by following the guidelines of the executive and legislative authorities intended to politically subordinate the judiciary, a ruling issued in this case will be an example of an action of the “quid pro quo” type. Operating with its current membership for a number of months, the National Council of the Judiciary is not fulfilling its constitutional task of upholding the independence of the courts and the impartiality of the judges to any extent, which is confirmed by the results of the survey conducted by the Judges Cooperation Forum. The members of the Constitutional Tribunal appointed over the last three years have repeatedly breached the basic principles of a fair hearing, including by bringing about a situation in which two judges – stand-ins (judges Cioch and Muszyński) ruled in their own cases. It is disgusting and unacceptable for the highest-ranking judicial authority in the country not to respect the basic principles of the correct administration of justice, which arise from at least the times of Roman law. The admission of the judge-stand-ins and the manipulation of the adjudicating panels by the person holding the post of President of the Constitutional Tribunal should be assessed similarly. Over the last three years, the Constitutional Tribunal has become transformed from an effective guardian of the Constitution into one of the main instruments of destruction of the rule of law in Poland. It can be easily foreseen that the outcome of the Constitutional Tribunal’s assessment of the constitutionality of the National Council of the Judiciary, as a political order that has been issued, will not assure this body of its appropriate legitimacy or acceptance in the eyes of judges and the public for these reasons.

Resolution 3

The General Assembly of Judges of the Regional Court in Kraków fully supports resolution 2 of the Assembly of Judges of the Regional Court in Rzeszów of 16 November 2018 expressing its objection to the position of the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) of 9 November 2018. The position of the KRS with respect to the Order of the President of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, Judge Stanisław Zabłocki, which suggests that the Judge was “unworthy of the office of judge”, should be considered a manifestation of an extremely dishonourable act on the part of that body, which simultaneously has the intention of achieving exclusively short-term political objectives with respect to a person who has not only been demonstrating loyalty to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland with his whole professional life, but who also is and will always be an unsurpassed role model for all those judges of the Republic of Poland for whom the administration of justice in accordance with its basic constitutional rules written into the Constitution is the highest value in the judicial service, through his wisdom, integrity, commitment and ethical conduct. This suggestion is all the more contemptible that, coinciding with the centenary of Poland regaining its sovereignty, it was addressed to a man whose merits for his activities in support of the sovereign existence of the State of Poland are undeniable. Furthermore, after 1989, Judge Zabłocki supported the rehabilitation of those who sacrificed their lives for a Free and Sovereign Poland, one of the many examples being the fact that the Judge was responsible for the rehabilitation of Rittmeister Witold Pilecki. Judge Zabłocki, whose merits cannot be overstated, are clearly superior to those that overcame many others in this respect, being obviously contradictory to the activities of all those who currently consider the Judge to be “unworthy of the office of judge”, having betrayed the values for which he stands in recent years.

Resolution 4

We obligate the President of the Regional Court in Kraków to post these resolutions on the Court’s website and to forward them to the President of the Republic of Poland, the Minister of Justice, the Chairperson of the National Council of the Judiciary, the First President of the Supreme Court and the Presidents of the Appellate and Regional Courts. We simultaneously authorize associations of judges to publicize the content of this resolution by sending it to the entities mentioned above, and to translate points 1–4 of the resolution into English, and then send the translations to foreign organizations, institutions, foundations, associations dealing with the monitoring of the rule of law and the protection of the independence of the courts and the impartiality of the judges, in particular: National Councils of the Judiciary of the European States, the Court in Strasbourg, the Court in Luxemburg, the Consultative Council of European Judges (CCJE), the European Networks of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ), the Judges for Judges Foundation, the American Bar Association (ABA), the Venice Commission (European Commission for Democracy through Law), the Association of European Judges for Democracy and liberty (MEDEL, the European association of judges and public prosecutors), the European Association of Judges (EAJ), the International Association of Judges (IAJ), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Council of Bars and Law Societes of Europe (CCBE), the Association of European Administrative Judges (AEAJ), The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), to Mr. Nils Muizhneks – Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Diego Garcia Sayan – Special United Nations Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Amnesty International, United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), the European Law Institute (ELI), Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI Institute) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).