WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland will do away with a system for disciplining judges which the EU’s top court has ruled violates EU rules, the head of the country’s ruling party told the state news agency PAP in an interview published on Saturday.
Poland faces an Aug. 16 deadline set by the European Commission to disband the Disciplinary Chamber, which the EU says does not guarantee the judiciary’s independence and undercuts the bloc’s laws.
“We will dissolve the Disciplinary Chamber as it currently operates and in this way the subject of the dispute will disappear,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) and a deputy prime minister, told PAP.
Poland risks fines or losing some of its EU development funding if the matter is not resolved.
Kaczynski said reform of the judiciary, including a proposal to change the chamber, had already been planned, but he rejected the ruling by the EU’s top court.
“I do not recognise these kind of rulings as they clearly go beyond the Treaties and extend the jurisdiction of the EU courts,” he said.
The government will put forward its first proposals for reforming the Disciplinary Chamber in September, Kaczynski said.
The head of Poland’s Supreme Court on Thursday partially froze the Disciplinary Chamber saying that no new cases would go to the chamber until legislative changes are introduced or until the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issues a final verdict on the matter.
(Reporting by Alicja Ptak; editing by Jason Neely)
