Aktualne kierunki rozwoju władzy sądowniczej. Marsz Tysiąca Tóg rok później

In our democratic societies, judges have the responsibility to check and balance the other state powers as well to guarantee our fundamental rights. Judges must make fair and impartial decisions and protect our rights, no matter who is in power and who is in office. To comply with these responsibilities judiciary must be independent.

Therefore, independent courts are one of the fundaments, one of the basic pillars of our joint European house, our joint shelter.

What is if judges were controlled by the legislative or executive power, by political parties or some other interest groups? Clearly, our house would miss one of the key ­pillars or would miss a solid rock to be built on and the house would collapse.

Similar like a builder of such columns, it is the obligation of judges to stand up and warn that the column or the house is about to collapse.

This obligation is part of our professional oath and has nothing to do with private political convictions.

Repeatedly, so many of us have warned that the ­developments of the so-called judicial reform in Poland intend to bring Polish colleagues under political control. Due to limited time I cannot go into detail, however, you are well informed anyway.

So there are strong cracks, but a complete collapse has so far been prevented by the courageous appearance of Polish colleagues from Iusitia and Themis as well as large sections of the Polish society.

A year ago, thousands of us have gathered to march through Warsaw in order to protest against the attacks on the independence and the most recent governmental ­attempts to bring judiciary under their control, namely the so-called draft Muzzle law.

This Muzzle law is now in force. On the basis of this law some Polish judge colleagues, who openly stand up in the defense of the rule of law, are now persecuted in violation of fundamental rights, fundamental principles of EU law and in violation of clear orders of the CJEU.

These actions against individual judge colleagues also intend to have freezing effect on all other Polish judge colleagues.

This means that one of the key pillars of our European house shows large cracks and is likely to fall apart.

Therefore it is our obligation to stand up for our European colleagues and to denounce these attacks on ­independence.

We must also do so to warn about a loss of mutual trust in Europe and its effects on the European house.

We must also do so to provide correct information to the members of our societies: all kinds of non-objective and even false criticism by politicians or social media have tried to undermine trust into an independent judiciary. One of the weirdest things was the troll-farm in the dark circles of the Ministry of Justice.

Therefore we continue our joint demonstration, our joint march, this year.

I am overwhelmed how many of you have gathered – ­although only online due to the pandemic situation.

This confirms the growing awareness and even still ­increasing solidarity with our Polish colleagues.

This also confirms our solid concern worldwide on ­attacks on the independence of judge colleagues.

This also shows that our Polish colleagues courageously continue their way and follow the high judicial moral standards, as well as large sections of the Polish society, who ­oppose illegal fundamental rights interventions. This makes us confident that a total collapse of our house can be prevented.

Let’s stick to it, let us do our best to protect the rule of law in our countries! Let us continue our efforts to have a joint solid house!

My dear Polish colleagues, Chapeau!