35 billion euros from the Corona aid fund reserved for Poland have so far been withheld. The ruling party PiS urgently needs the money before the parliamentary elections in autumn.
425 million euros – that’s how much independence from the supposed yoke of the Brussels institutions costs. As of January 1st, this was the sum of the penalties that Poland imposed for non-compliance with an order of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The EU’s highest judges had instructed the national-populist government in Warsaw to stop the prosecution of independent judges – without success. The ECJ will probably judge the cause in March or April. In the meantime, however, the saga about the elimination of the independent judiciary by the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been enriched by a few chapters – and with each passing week it is becoming more difficult, even for those interested, to keep track.
The so-called gag ordinance criticized by the ECJ, which was intended to make it impossible for independent judges to defend themselves against the government’s crackdown, has since been shelved or replaced by a new ordinance – the weaknesses of which, however, are also objected to. The mess created by the PiS-led government’s attack on judicial independence is complicated by the fact that, in the meantime, countless so-called neo-judges (i.e. judges who appoint to office in disregard of the constitutional principles of the rule of law). were) do their job at all levels of the judiciary – and thus also in those bodies that the government camp envisages will in future be concerned with the supervision of judicial independence after the originally introduced bodies had to stop their work under pressure from the EU.