Warsaw, 3 March 2022
Statement of the Judges of the Supreme Court
Further to the draft amendments to the Act on the Supreme Court and certain Other Acts of 8 December 2017 (Sejm FormNo. 2011), the draft Act on the protection of judicial independence and special rules of criminal and disciplinary liability of judges (Sejm Form No. 2013) and the draft new Act on Supreme Court (Sejm Form No. 2050), which were submitted to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland,
given the total omission of the judicial community from the process of their preparation and consultation, we declare the following:
1) We note the attempts to solve the problem of the destruction of the judiciary that has been growing since 2016, including the Supreme Court, simultaneously noticing that the presented drafts do not implement the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 19 November 2019 in joined Cases C-585/18, C-624/18 and C-625/18, of 2 March 2021 in Case C824/18, of 15 July 2021 in Case C-791/19 and of 6 October 2021 in Case C-487/19. They also fail to take account of the conclusions drawn from the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Reczkowicz v Poland, Dolińska-Ficek and Ozimek v Poland and Advance Pharma v Poland.
2) It arises from these judgments of the European Courts that the main source of threats to the state of the rule of law in Poland is the formation of the judicial component of the National Council of the Judiciary on the basis of the provisions of the Act amending the Act on the National Council of the Judiciary and certain other acts of 8 December 2017, which is inconsistent with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, and the related status of people appointed to the office of judge on the basis of resolutions of theNational Council of the Judiciary thus formed.
3) The presented drafts do not contain any proposals of statutory changes regarding the restoration of the National Council of the Judiciary to its constitutional functions, including the duty to safeguard the independence of the courts and the independence of judges. Therefore, we uphold our declaration that we can participate in the work intended to achieve the necessary consensus on these matters in the interest of the public, the judiciary and the citizens.
We would like to emphasise that, especially in the current international situation caused by Russia’s aggression with respect to Ukraine, which constitutes a gross breach of the international legal order and human rights violations, legal solutions must be adopted which fully respect the principles of the rule of law and respect the values on which the functioning of the European Union is based. It should be obvious to each of us how important the respect of these values is to the unity of and cooperation between the Member States of the European Union, which constitutes a real guarantee of the protection of the interests of our country.
Civil Chamber
Active Judges
Teresa Bielska-Sobkowicz
Dariusz Dończyk
Paweł Grzegorczyk
Monika Koba
Grzegorz Misiurek
Władysław Pawlak
Agnieszka Piotrowska
Marta Romańska
Krzysztof Strzelczyk
Roman Trzaskowski
Katarzyna Tyczka-Rote
Karol Weitz
Dariusz Zawistowski
Retired Judges
Mirosław Bączyk
Tadeusz Ereciński
Józef Frąckowiak
Jan Górowski
Irena Gromska-Szuster
Jacek Gudowski
Wojciech Katner
Marian Kocon
Iwona Koper
Anna Kozłowska
Zbigniew Kwaśniewski
Barbara Myszka
Anna Owczarek
Henryk Pietrzkowski
Krzysztof Pietrzykowski
Marek Sychowicz
Maria Szulc
Bogumiła Ustjanicz
Lech Walentynowicz
Tadeusz Wiśniewski
Hubert Wrzeszcz
Kazimierz Zawada
Czesława Żuławska
Criminal Chamber
Active Judges
Michał Laskowski
Tomasz Artymiuk
Jacek Błaszczyk
Małgorzata Gierszon
Jerzy Grubba
Kazimierz Klugiewicz
Rafał Malarski
Jarosław Matras
Piotr Mirek
Marek Pietruszyński
Waldemar Płóciennik
Zbigniew Puszkarski
Andrzej Siuchniński
Barbara Skoczkowska
Andrzej Stępka
Dariusz Świecki
Andrzej Tomczyk
Małgorzata Wąsek-Wiaderek
Eugeniusz Wildowicz
Paweł Wiliński
Włodzimierz Wróbel
Retired Judges
Adam Strzembosz
Lech Gardocki
Stanisław Zabłocki
Wiesław Błuś
Krzysztof Cesarz
Henryk Gradzik
Przemysław Kalinowski
Andrzej Konopka
Józef Musioł
Dorota Rysińska
Roman Sądej
Jacek Sobczak
Ewa Strużyna
Józef Szewczyk
Feliks Tarnowski
Jadwiga Żywolewska-Ławniczak
Labour and Social Insurance Chamber
Active Judges
Piotr Prusinowski
Bohdan Bieniek
Jolanta Frańczak
Katarzyna Gonera
Józef Iwulski
Halina Kiryło
Dawid Miąsik
Maciej Pacuda
Krzysztof Rączka
Romualda Spyt
Retired Judges
Małgorzata Gersdorf
Jan Wasilewski
Teresa Flemming-Kulesza
Beata Gudowska
Zbigniew Hajn
Roman Kuczyński
Jerzy Kuźniar
Andrzej Wasilewski
Barbara Wagner
Małgorzata Wrębiakowska-Marzec
Andrzej Wróbel
Link to the original publication in Polish:
