Amnesty, European judges back Poland’s embattled top judge
WARSAW: European judicial authorities and a human rights group on Friday offered ‘moral support’ to Poland’s disputed Supreme Court chief justice, visiting her at the body’s Warsaw offices where she showed up for work in defiance of a retirement law she argues is unconstitutional.
Fifteen Supreme Court judges, including its chief justice Malgorzata Gersdorf, received retirement notices from President Andrzej Duda on Thursday, court spokesman Michal Laskowski said.
Gersdorf, 65, has refused to comply with a new law that took effect on Tuesday at midnight and reduces the retirement age for Supreme Court judges from 70 to 65.
She argues that the constitution sets her term as chief justice at six years, overriding the law, which the EU has slammed as a threat to judicial independence.
Although they contest the retirement law pushed through by Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government, the 14 other judges have complied with it, Laskowski said.
“We have no doubt in our mind that we have just met with the Supreme Court chief justice,” Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty International’s incoming secretary general, told reports following talks with Gersdorf.
Dutch Supreme Court chief justice Maarten Feteris and Kees Sterk, president of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) and Marc de Werd, from the Consultative Council of European Judges at the Council of Europe, also met with Gersdorf.
“All three of us have the same message; we are all very worried about the rule of law in Poland, worried about separation of powers and the independence of judges and we strongly hope that judicial independence will be restored very soon,” Marc de Werd told reporters following the talks.
An ENCJ statement insists that ‘forced early retirement’ of Supreme Court judges ‘is a further attempt to bring the judiciary under control of the government’. — AFP