Witch Hunt against 14 Cracow Judges
Warsaw, January 22nd, 2021 To: Věra Jourová European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency Didier Reynders European Commissioner for Justice Dear Honourable Members of the European...
View ArticleIn the EU, it’s the Rule of Law. In Poland, it’s Unconstitutional?
The Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, in his capacity as Prosecutor General, wants to apply to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal to have the EU regulation connecting the rule of law with the...
View ArticleThe Enemy Within
1. Considerations on the Government of Poland It is an oft-forgotten fact that Poland has a coalition government. And it is oft-forgotten for a good reason: the largest of the coalition partners, PiS...
View ArticleThe EU Parliament’s Abdication on the Rule of Law (Regulation)
To paraphrase a previous blog entry by Scheppele, Pech and Kelemen, if the The Decline and Fall of the European Union is ever written, historians will conclude that not only the EU’s two key...
View ArticleMisjudging Judges
Last year I attended four hearings at the Court of Justice (see here, here, here and here). Each time the topic was the independence of judges in Poland. Every time I also met judges from other Member...
View ArticleCorona Constitutional #56: Wer gewinnt?
EU-Mitgliedstaaten, die ihre Justiz unterjochen, verletzen EU-Recht: das hat der EuGH in Luxemburg mit seinem gestrigen Urteil zum polnischen Nationalen Justizrat kraftvoll deutlich gemacht. Die...
View ArticleHistorians on Trial
On 9 February 2021, the District Court in Warsaw ruled that two prominent Holocaust researchers must publicly apologize for statements published in a book about the extermination of Jews in Nazi...
View ArticleThe New Normal? – Emergency Measures in Response to the Second COVID-19 Wave...
In many ways, this post will serve as a sequel to the contribution made towards the previous “COVID-19 and States of Emergency” COVID-19 Symposium, indeed many of the aspects of Poland’s response to...
View ArticleA Letter to the European Commission
28 March 2021 Ursula von der Leyen President of the European Commission Věra Jourová Vice-President of the European Commission Didier Reynders Member of the European Commission Dear President, Dear...
View ArticleIntimidation through Litigation
Last week, legal proceedings were initiated against a Polish writer as well as a couple of high school students for allegedly insulting Polish President Andrzej Duda. These proceedings are just the...
View ArticleFrom Captured State to Captive Mind
In loving memory of my late grandmother Czesława Strąg, The Righteous Among the Nations of the World who tirelessly taught me that in order to really move forward we must never forget about our...
View ArticleBad Tandem
With its ruling of 15 April 2021, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal willingly accepts the role of substitute lawmaker. The result is an inelegant, clumsy judgment that creates more problems than it...
View ArticleHow the EU is Becoming a Rule-of-Law-less Union of States
While the content of the new anti-constitutional doctrine in Poland has been firmly established, what keeps changing are the plots, characters and the doctrine’s reach. The annihilation of the...
View ArticleSolving the Copenhagen Dilemma
One of the immediately apparent flaws of the legal-political organization of European Union enlargements consisted in the so-called ‘Copenhagen dilemma’: EU’s inability to reshape the legal-political...
View ArticleWhat Should and What Will Happen After Xero Flor
On 7 May 2021, the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment in the case concerning irregularities in the personal composition of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (the case of Xero Flor w...
View ArticleThe ECtHR Steps into the Ring
For the last two years, the fight for safeguarding the principle of the rule of law in Poland has been dominated by the ECJ’s case law. In this fight, the Luxembourg Court has landed some important...
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Tanz der Gerichte
Seit gestern findet sich das Bundesverfassungsgericht in einer ungewohnten Rolle wieder: Ein Gericht eines Mitgliedstaats der Bundesrepublik hat ihm Fragen vorgelegt, wie das ihm exklusiv zur Auslegung...
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Dance of Courts
Since yesterday, the German Federal Constitutional Court finds itself in an unusual role: a member state court has referred questions to it about the correct interpretation of the federal law. It is...
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Grenzen
Waren Sie schon mal in Zittau? Nein? Ich auch nicht, keine Sorge. Niemand war schon mal in Zittau. Zittau, das ist das Entlegenste, das man sich vorstellen kann, die äußerste Peripherie, der...
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Borders
Have you ever been to Zittau? No? Me neither, don’t worry. No one has ever been to Zittau. Zittau is the most remote place you can imagine, the outermost periphery, the finis terrae of Saxony, beyond...
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