nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20220426-182140-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 220426s2022||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20220426-182140-0 doi eng 342 23 Wójcik, Anna Author aut (orcid)0000-0003-4439-143X Keeping the Past and the Present Apart - The CJEU, the Rule of Law Crisis, and Decommunization Wójcik, Anna Verfassungsblog 2022-04-26 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier The mere fact that a judge was appointed for the first time under undemocratic conditions does not automatically determine that the court in which that judge adjudicates lacks the necessary independence under EU law. The CJEU has answered to this effect a question of Mr. Kamil Zaradkiewicz, appointed to Poland's Supreme Court in 2018 on recommendation of the new government-controlled National Council of Judiciary and thus lacking independence himself. Importantly, the CJEU emphasized that the referring court did not submit any evidence that may rise legitimate and serious doubts, in the minds of individuals, over independence and impartiality of the particular judge. With this decision, the Court refused to be drawn into the inner-Polish dispute about decommunization, and reinforced its jurisprudence on judicial independence standards in the EU. CC BY-SA 4.0 Decommunization ECJ judicial independence Kamil Zaradkiewicz Rule of Law Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://verfassungsblog.de/keeping-the-past-and-the-present-apart/ raw object