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No Appeasement
If you control everything, you are blamed for everything. I suppose this can become a bit of a pain for an authoritarian president eventually. For a while you may get away with making a paternally...
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Kein Appeasement
Wer alles kontrolliert, ist auch an allem schuld. Das ist eine blöde Situation auf die Dauer für einen autoritäre Machthaber. Eine Weile lang mag man davonkommen damit, dass man sich vor eine Kamera...
View ArticleFrench Law is NOT a Model for the Polish Bill on Disciplining Judges
We, French legal academics and experts in French Law, reject the instrumentalization of French Law by the Polish Government On 13 December 2019, the Polish ruling party, PiS (“Law & Justice”),...
View ArticleOnly a Court Established by Law Can Be an Independent Court
In the preliminary ruling delivered on 19 November 2019 in Joined Cases C-585/18, C-624/18 and 625/18, A.K. and others, the European Court of Justice established a detailed method for assessing the...
View ArticleEU Rule of Law Dialogues: Risks – in Context
On January 16, 2020 the European Parliament passed a resolution about the state of the Article 7(1) TEU hearings with Hungary and Poland, noting with concern that “the reports and statements by the...
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Have you noticed that burnt smell?
I’ll be 50 soon, and with that age comes a certain propensity to sentimentalize about one’s school days. Oh, those German lessons! Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Martin Walser. Nobody reads those guys...
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Was qualmt denn da so komisch?
Ich werde jetzt ja bald 50, da wird man sentimental und erinnert sich an die Schulzeit zurück. Hach, der Deutschunterricht! Hach, Günter Grass und Heinrich Böll und Martin Walser! Liest ja heute kein...
View ArticlePolen, die EU und das Ende der Welt, wie wir sie kennen: ein Interview mit...
MS: Die Art, wie in Polen seit März 2018 Richter_innen ernannt werden, insbesondere die neue Disziplinarkammer beim Obersten Gerichtshof, verletzt das Prinzip der Unabhängigkeit der Justiz und ist...
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Is it worth being a Rejtan?
At the end of my term of office at the Constitutional Tribunal my collaborators gave me a replica of Jan Matejko’s painting 'Rejtan'.1)Rejtan, or the Fall of Poland (Polish: Rejtan. Upadek Polski) is...
View Article"Judges should be fully insulated from any sort of pressure"
Anna Wójcik: Why is the principle of mutual trust between Member States fundamental for the European Union? How does a State earn trust? Koen Lenaerts: The Member States are all committed to the...
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The EU has no National Guard
Well, then. They’re out. The Brits are no longer Union citizens, the UK is no longer an EU member state. Foreign country from now on. On Wednesday in the European Parliament, the whole House sang Auld...
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Die EU hat keine Nationalgarde
So. Also. Sie sind draußen. Die Brit_innen sind keine Unionsbürger_innen, UK ist kein Mitgliedstaat mehr. Ausland von jetzt an. Am Mittwoch im Europaparlament sang der ganze Plenarsaal Auld Lang Syne,...
View ArticleThe Struggle of Strasbourg
This year’s Winter Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) saw three distinct yet interrelated developments. On Tuesday, the Assembly decided to open a monitoring...
View ArticleYou Can’t Forbid Judges to Think
The Polish judiciary is split apart. One part adheres to the ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) of 19th November 2019 (combined cases C-585/18, C-624/18 and C-625/18), another does not....
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Das ist kein Probealarm
Vor vier Jahren, im fluchbeladenen Jahr 2016, als erst das Brexit-Referendum und dann die Trump-Wahl das liberal-demokratische Urvertrauen in die Vernünftigkeit der Welt erschütterte, überkam mich...
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This is not a drill
Four years ago, in the cursed year 2016, when first the Brexit referendum and then the Trump election shook the liberal democratic basic trust in the reasonableness of the world to the core, I...
View ArticleThe Ghost of an Authoritarian State Stands at the Door of Your Home
The following is a speech given at the 48th European Presidents’ Conference of Lawyers 2020 in Vienna. In the late hot summer of 2033, in the home of a retired judge, a copy of a letter dated 21...
View ArticleFor Norway it’s Official: The Rule of Law is No More in Poland
The last straw The so-called “muzzle law”, adopted by the Polish parliament on January 23, was the last straw. On Thursday 27 February, the board of the Norwegian Court Administration (NCA) decided to...
View ArticleMuzzling Associations of Judges
Only a few days before the oral hearing at the CJEU about the preliminary measures against Poland, the Disciplinary law, often called “muzzle law” is on the mind of everyone who is worried about the...
View ArticleOpen Letter to the President of the European Commission regarding Poland’s...
Dear President von der Leyen, As experts specialising in the rule of law, we wrote to you on 11 December to urge you to apply for interim measures to put an end to the persecution of Polish judges...
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