Judgment concerning Poland
In the case of Morawiec v. Poland the Court held that there had been several violations of the Convention.
The applicant in this case is a judge. Since 2018 she has been the President of the Judges’ Association Themis, which has publicly criticised the Government’s reforms affecting the judiciary.
The case concerns rulings by the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court (“the DCSC”) relating to The applicant’s immunity from prosecution and to her suspension from judicial duties, which she argues were taken in reaction to her public criticisms of the judicial reforms and a successful civil action she had brought against the Minister of Justice in 2017.
The Court held, as it had in previous cases, that the DCSC was not a “tribunal established by law”. It found that the measures taken by the authorities to lift the applicant’s immunity and to suspend her from judicial duties could be characterised as a strategy aimed at intimidating her and that those measures must have had a “chilling effect”, discouraging not only her, but also other judges from participating in public debate on legislative reforms.