WARSAW (Reuters) – The procedure to appoint judges to a new chamber of Poland’s Supreme Court is defective and Warsaw has to take appropriate legislative measures to correct the process, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said on Thursday.
Rule of law issues took centre stage in Poland after Oct. 15 elections in which pro-European parties won a majority, a shift after eight years of Law and Justice (PiS) party rule and feuding with Brussels over issues such as judicial independence.
The parties will face challenges rolling back the court reforms of PiS, which is one of the conditions for obtaining EU recovery funds. Those include changes to a council that decides on appointments of judges.
Thursday’s case was brought to the ECHR by former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa after an appeals court verdict in a case he had brought about the protection of his personal interests was reversed by the Chamber of Extraordinary Review and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court.
Walesa argued that logging an extraordinary appeal in his case by Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also prosecutor general, was politically motivated and that he was not ensured the right to an independent and impartial tribunal.
The court found that his right to a fair trial was not secured due to “interrelated systemic problems connected with the malfunctioning of domestic legislation and practice”.
Those were caused by, among other things, a defective procedure for judicial appointments that had resulted in a lack of independence on the part of the Supreme Court’s Chamber of Extraordinary Review and Public Affairs, it said.
It added that to put an end to systemic violations of the European Convention of Human Rights, Poland had to take steps to secure in its domestic law compliance with the requirements of an ‘independent and impartial tribunal established by law’.
Walesa was awarded 30,000 euros ($32,721.00) in damages.
The Strasbourg court has several dozen cases pending over appointments of Polish judges. The PiS government has ignored several past rulings by European bodies over its judiciary and other matters, saying they were illegal and politically motivated interference.
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(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by William Maclean)
