Poland’s judicial reforms violate EU law

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Poland’s judiciary reform that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges has breached EU law, the EU’s top court said in a binding ruling on Monday (24 June), which effectively means Poland will have to scrap the reform or face penalties from Brussels. “Deciding otherwise would have undermined the credibility of Article 2 [of the Treaty of the European Union] values to an impermissible debate and, crucially for the Court, would make it impossible for the local judges in the member states to fulfil their core EU functions as European judges,” Dimitry Kochenov, a professor of EU constitutional law at the University of Groningen, told EURACTIV after the ruling. This is very much in line with Kochenov's RECONNECT research.