Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-03/cp210031en.pdf

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Court of Justice of the European Union

PRESS RELEASE No 31/21

Luxembourg, 2 March 2021

Judgment in Case C-824/18 A.B. and Others. (Appointment of judges to the Supreme Court – Actions)

Successive amendments to the Polish Law on the National Council of the Judiciary which have the effect of removing effective judicial review of that council’s decisions proposing to the President of the Republic candidates for the office of judge at the Supreme Court are liable to infringe EU law

Where an infringement has been proved, the principle of the primacy of EU law requires the national court to disapply such amendments

By resolutions adopted in August 2018, the Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa (National Council of the Judiciary, Poland) (‘the KRS’) decided not to present to the President of the Republic of Poland proposals for the appointment of five persons (‘the appellants’) to positions as judges at the Sąd Najwyższy (Supreme Court, Poland) and to propose other candidates for those positions. The appellants lodged appeals against these resolutions before the Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny (Supreme Administrative Court, Poland), the referring court. Such appeals were governed at that time by the Law on the National Council of the Judiciary (‘the Law on the KRS’), as amended by a law of July 2018. Under those rules, it was provided that unless all the participants in a procedure for appointment to a position as judge at the Supreme Court challenged the relevant resolution of the KRS, that resolution became final with respect to the candidate presented for that position, so that the latter could be appointed by the President of the Republic. Moreover, any annulment of such a resolution on appeal of a participant not proposed for appointment could not lead to a fresh assessment of that participant’s situation for the purposes of any assignment of the position concerned. In addition, under those rules, such an appeal could not be based on an allegation that there was an incorrect assessment of the candidates’ fulfilment of the criteria taken into account when a decision on the presentation of the proposal for appointment was made. In its initial request for a preliminary ruling, the referring court, taking the view that such rules preclude in practice any effectiveness of the appeal lodged by a participant who has not been proposed for appointment, decided to refer questions to the Court on whether those rules comply with EU law. 

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