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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.

The purpose of this article is the general vision of judicial independence in the EU and its defence mechanisms. The article analyses the ways of the protection of this principle, as well as its development and substantial content in the context of the recent CJEU jurisprudence on the status of the judiciary in Poland. The first part of the article explains the techniques (of a political and legal nature) to guarantee judicial independence in the EU. The objective is to demonstrate how the procedure based on the Article 7 TEU, as well as the preliminary rulings (Article 267 TFEU) and infringement procedures (Article 258 TFEU) increment the enforceability of judicial independence. In the second part the article develops the concept of judicial independence and the detailed guarantees in this field, including rules for judicial appointments, the retirement regime, disciplinary responsibility and remuneration.

The article presents rule of law crisis in Poland provoked by covid-19 pandemic

This conference speech argues that the judgement of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal K 3/21 can be understood only in the context of the current conflict between the Polish government and the European Union. Moreover, some other details, including how the unconstitutionality of the EU Treaty provisions was formulated, are important. The development of the judicial independence doctrine in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union may cause discussion. Nonetheless, the judgement K 3/21 is not an example of constructive debate about the division of the competences in the European legal sphere. It constitutes an example of the abuse of the constitutional identity and it resolves a false problem, as in reality there is no conflict between the norms of the Polish Constitution and the EU law as far as the guarantees of the judicial independence are concerned. Moreover, the judgement K 3/21 was delivered by the Constitutional Tribunal which itself lacks the guarantees of independence, what was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights (7.05.2021 Xero Flor, 4907/18).

The conference presentation explains the use of the scientific data in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights