'Relocation of judges may violate their independence': the CJEU
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The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on a preliminary question from the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court on the transfer of judges to other courts or other divisions of the same court without their consent. The judgment stated that “this may violate the principles of irremovability and independence of judges”.
The CJEU's decision was issued after the judges of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court asked the Court for a preliminary ruling regarding the status of judges appointed with the participation of the new National Council of the Judiciary after 2018. The CJEU stated that decisions issued with the participation of such persons may be considered null and void – because the procedure for their Appointments to the Supreme Court has grossly violated the legal order of the European Union, and such persons do not guarantee the impartiality and independence of judges.
The case dates back to 2018 when judge Waldemar Żurek was transferred between two divisions of the District Court from the appeal division (second instance) to the civil division (first instance) where he worked. He appealed this decision to the National Council of the Judiciary, which discontinued the proceedings. The judge referred the National Council of the Judiciary to the Supreme Court, and the latter applied for a transfer to the Court of Justice of the EU. There the Civil Chamber was supposed to deal with it, but earlier the complaint of judge Żurek – without knowing the case files – was rejected by a new member of the Extraordinary Control Chamber and the nominee of the so-called neoKRS Aleksander Stępkowski, co-founder of Ordo Iuris and former deputy minister of foreign affairs in the PiS government.
The Tribunal ruled that the transfer of Judge Żurek was illegal, stating that "such a transfer may be a means of controlling the content of court rulings, because it may not only affect the scope of cases assigned to given judges to be examined and the handling of cases that they have in their report, but it may also have significant repercussions on the life and career of these judges and produce effects analogous to those associated with disciplinary sanctions.
