Agata Hauser, Visegrad Talk, ‘Winning the Battle, Losing the War: Polish Courts as EU Courts?’

In September 2018 the European Commission referred Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for violating the principle of judicial independence with the controversial law on appointing Supreme Court judges. At the same time, the judges currently serving on the Polish Supreme Court, as well as the Supreme Administrative Court, referred several questions to the CJEU (under the preliminary ruling procedure) concerning the new laws on the judiciary. Can the Court of Justice of the EU effectively protect the independence and impartiality of national courts of the EU member states and what are the limits of its competence? Taking into account the near-Brexit atmosphere in Europe, this presentation will discuss the role of the EU judicial institutions in light of severe political challenges in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.