Poland has called on the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to monitor the German system for appointing judges to its federal bench, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, said in Warsaw on Monday.
Ziobro said he would put the proposal to the Polish Cabinet, charging that the politicisation of German appointments infringed European Union rules.
If the ECJ took the view that the involvement of politicians in the selection procedure for Polish judges placed a question mark over their independence, then Poland would pose the question of what influence an involvement of this kind had on the independence of future German judges, he said.
Poland’s national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) government has for years been restructuring the country’s judiciary, amid allegations that judges have been pressured politically.
The European Commission has opened several treaty infringement procedures and submitted dockets to the ECJ.
In July, the ECJ ruled that a disciplinary chamber set up in 2018 for Poland’s highest court did not fully guarantee their independence and impartiality.
The members of the chamber were selected by Poland’s National Council for the Judiciary whose members are appointed by the Polish parliament.
The ECJ noted that the council had been “significantly reorganised by the Polish executive and legislature’’ and said that its independence may give rise to reasonable doubts.
