Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (13) (remove)
Language
- Spanish (13) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (13)
Keywords
On 7 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland declared the unconstitutionality of essential provisions of the Treaty on European Union, calling into question the principle of the primacy of EU law (judgment K 3/21). This decision is closely related to the Polish judicial reform that has been severely criticised by the CJEU for violating standards of judicial inde-pendence. This study first explains the process of political capture of the Polish Constitu-tional Court and then looks at the content of the K 3/21 judgment: the Polish Constitutional Tribunal attempt to reject the aforementioned case law of the CJEU on the grounds that the EU institutions have exceeded their competences. Secondly, this study aims to determine the extent of the Union’s competences in the area of the national judiciary, to explain the me-thods of resolving potential conflicts between national and EU laws and to analyse the conse-quences of the primacy principle. The key argument of this part of the article is that national judges have the faculty to examine, ex officio, the compatibility of a given national provision with EU law. This power cannot be limited by any national act, nor by the fact that there is a prior declaration of its constitutionality.
In Central Europe, especially in Hungary and Poland, over the last years there are serious problems related to democracy, constitutional balance and the rule of law. In a short time, the illiberal political leaders put into practice an order that calls into question principles that form part of the axiological foundation of the European Union. This article explains why illiberalism has been so successful in this region and which techniques have been used to reinforce the political capture of various state institutions,especially the judiciary. The article also contains a critical analysis of the European Union’s attitude towards Hungarian and Polish illiberalism. The general hypothesis of this study is that Hungary and Poland have gone so far towards constitutional illiberalism, that it is extremely difficult to indicate the simple legal remedies for rapid return of these countries to liberal democracy.
In the judgment of 24 June 2019, Commission v. Poland (Independence of the Supreme Court), C-619/18, EU:C:2019:531, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on the retirement of Polish Supreme Court judges, declaring that the mechanism of arbitrary lowering the retirement age was not compatible with the European Union law. This commentary analyses the latest changes in the Polish judicial system and the CJEU's arguments. The study is focused in the change in European case-law and the development of instruments available to the EU institutions for monitoring judicial independence. The paper discusses also the elements of the judicial independence indicated by CJEU and the rules on the retirement of judges.