07 November 2022
With or Without Hungary
By December 2022, the Council must vote on the Commission's proposal to withdraw EU budgetary funds from Hungary under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. Without a legal basis for its exclusion, Hungary will cast its vote on that proposal. Obviously, the participation of a Member State in a vote that decides on the consequences of its own rule of law violations seems paradoxical. There should be a general Treaty rule that prevents a Member State from voting in the Council when their own alleged misconduct is at stake. Continue reading >>
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18 August 2022
Testing judicial independence
Despite the recent abolition of the Disciplinary Chamber, the crisis in the Polish judiciary is still far from resolved. The main reason for this is that the status of judges appointed at the request of the National Council of the Judiciary have not yet been addressed. As a result of the lack of a systemic solution, the problem of irregular judicial appointments must be dealt with by courts in concrete cases. For that purpose, the Supreme Court developed a test aimed at determination of the impact of irregularities in the appointment of judges on the legality of the composition of the court. The most recent amendment to the Act on the Supreme Court introduced a new test and raises serious concerns. Continue reading >>
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