STRASBOURG, France (CN) — Europe’s top rights court has again sided with a Polish judge who says he was unfairly dismissed in the latest ruling against Warsaw over its rule of law crisis.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Poland violated the fair trial rights of former Supreme Administrative Court Judge Jan Grzęda, after removing him from the bench following 2017 changes to the judicial system.
“There has been a violation of Article 6,” court President Róbert Spanó said, reading the decision at the Strasbourg-based court. Grzęda was present when the ruling was announced.
Grzęda was elected in 2016 to the National Council of the Judiciary, or NCJ, a constitutionally created body that oversees the independence of courts and judges in Poland. In March 2018, under new regulations, the lower house of the Polish parliament elected 15 judges as new members of the NCJ. Grzęda was not among them and he claims he wasn’t even officially given notice he was terminated.
In a 16-1 decision, the Strasbourg court found that Poland had failed to protect Grzęda’s right to a fair trial, violating Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That treaty, signed in 1950, protects the political and civil rights of Europeans. The sole dissenting judge was appointed by Poland.
“As a result of the successive reforms, the judiciary – an autonomous branch of State power – has been exposed to interference by the executive and legislative powers and thus substantially weakened. The applicant’s case is one exemplification of this general trend,” the ruling states. “The Court finds that on account of the lack of judicial review in this case the respondent State impaired the very essence of the applicant’s right of access to a court.”
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party campaigned on fixing what they called a system of corrupt judges leftover from the communist era. Judicial reforms in the Central European country in 2017 handed control of the NCJ, which chooses judges in Poland, to parliament and the executive branch. The country’s Constitutional Court has ruled several times in the past few months that Article 6 of the human rights convention is not compatible with the Polish Constitution.
During a hearing in May, Warsaw defended the changes, arguing Grzęda’s termination was “justified and legitimate.” Amnesty International and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers also joined the case, arguing Grzęda termination showed major problems with judicial independence in the country.
The Court of Human Rights has already ruled in at least five other cases involving judges impacted by the judicial overhaul and has sided against Poland in all of them. There are another 93 applications pending before the court. In July, the Strasbourg court concluded the Polish judicial system was no longer free and fair in another ruling involving dismissed judges. In that case, the court sided with two judges who were denied seats by the NCJ.
The European Union’s top court, the European Court of Justice, held in February that the bloc can prevent Poland from accessing EU funds if it doesn’t adhere to democratic principles. Last year, Poland became the first country in history to be kicked out of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary, the central body for European justice organizations. “This is by no means a decision to celebrate,” the ENCJ said in a statement at the time.
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