London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 01, 2025

Poland bows to Brussels' demands on respect for judicial independence

Poland bows to Brussels' demands on respect for judicial independence

Poland announced this Saturday that it is reversing its judicial reform to avoid a head-on collision with the European Commission. The community body had denounced the introduction of a new disciplinary system for judges, considering that it threatened the independence of the Polish courts.
The Court of Justice of the European Union, at the request of the Commission, declared the changes illegal, but until this Saturday Warsaw threatened to resist complying with the verdict.

The withdrawal signal has come from the top because it has been Jaroslaw Kaczynski himself, outside the Polish government but number one of the party that supports it, who has closed the conflict with Brussels. “We will dissolve the disciplinary chamber in its current form and in this way the reason for the dispute will disappear,” said Kaczynski, president of PiS (Law and Justice) in a statement collected by Reuters.

Kaczynksi has ensured that, despite his surrender, he does not recognize the judgments of the EU Court that, in his opinion, go beyond what is foreseen in the EU Treaties. And he has indicated that the dissolution of the chamber had already been planned for months, long before the European Court ruled in mid-July.

But the announcement of the “liquidation” of the disciplinary chamber comes after the opening of a file of the Commission for contempt of the Court. The conflict had splashed, rebound, the Polish recovery plan, still pending the green light from the Commission and with which Warsaw expects to receive up to 36,000 million euros from the recovery fund.

Kaczynski’s words open at least a period of truce between Warsaw and Brussels, although they could strain relations within the Polish government. This Friday, Justice Minister Zbiqniew Ziobro, a member of United Poland, the other coalition party, was in favor of standing up to Brussels.

“I am completely against giving in to the illegal blackmail of the EU that is carried out through the Court of Justice of the EU,” said Ziobro in an interview with the Polish newspaper Rzcezpospolita. The minister assured that if the orders on judicial reform are complied with “then tomorrow the EU Court will issue a verdict that forces Poland, for example, to approve gay marriage and the adoption of children by such couples.”

The contempt for the European Court, however, would have exposed Poland to a brutal confrontation with the community institutions, which consider a priority to maintain legal security derived from respect for the judgments and orders of European justice. The conflict would have exposed Poland to lose European aid from the recovery fund against the pandemic, of which it expects to receive 24,000 million in non-refundable grants and 12,000 million in loans under favorable conditions.

Kaczynski’s turnaround will now allow the Commission to focus on its confrontation with the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which also keeps the approval of the recovery plan blocked, endowed with 7.2 billion euros in subsidies. In this case, the conflict parallel to the processing of the plan revolves around the law approved by Budapest to prohibit the dissemination of content related to the LGTBIQ community by any means to which minors may have access.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has accused the Orbán executive of equipping homosexuality with pornography and pedophilia with that law and has opened an infringement file to demand its withdrawal. Budapest has assured that it will maintain the norm. Some analysts point out that Orbán will yield, on the other hand, at the other point of friction with Brussels, relative, as in Poland, to respect for judicial independence.

In the Polish case, the tension with Brussels festered on July 14, when the Constitutional Court of Poland issued an opinion in which it assured that the precautionary measures of the European justice to stop the judicial reform could not be applied. That same day, the EU Court, based in Luxembourg, issued an order to provisionally suspend the activity of the disciplinary chamber created to monitor the judges of the Polish Supreme Court.

The collision of the two jurisdictions, that of the Polish Constitutional Court and the European court, set off alarms in the European Commission. Von der Leyen warned that he would use his entire arsenal to stop the contempt. Only six after the Constitutional order, the Commission opened an infringement file and gave Poland a month (until August 14) to obey the orders of the European Court under penalty of potentially multimillion-dollar fines.

The vice president of the Justice Area Commission, Vera Jourova, justified the speed in an interview with MRT. “It is not surprising that we react quickly. We play a lot, ”Jourova pointed out.

The jurisdictional conflict with Warsaw is the most serious, but not the only one that the Commission keeps open. Brussels has also filed a case against Poland for the creation in a hundred localities of the so-called LGTBI-free zones.

In addition, both Poland and Hungary are subject to a file based on article 7 of the EU Treaty, a never-used nuclear weapon that allows members who violate the fundamental values ​​of the club to suspend the right to vote in the Council of the Union. . The threat has never materialized, among other things, because it means turning the affected country into an institutional pariah and because the tremendous punishment requires the unanimity of all the partners, a consensus that does not exist.

But the Commission has had another much more expeditious way to sanction since January 1, thanks to a regulation that allows the suspension of Community funds to countries where the fragility of the rule of law does not guarantee their proper management. Brussels has promised not to strictly apply this rule until the European Court rules on its legality following two appeals presented by Warsaw and Budapest. But the Von der Leyen executive insists that he is already collecting information for the possible investigation of files as soon as he has the green light from the judges.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
×