Poland’s procedure for appointing senior judges by the executive branch violates EU rules, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has said.
Tuesday’s ruling by the CJEU said the situation in Poland in which the justice minister, “who is also the Public Prosecutor General,” can “second judges to higher criminal courts” and terminate them at any time “without stating reasons,” infringes on the independence of the judicial branch.
The EU court’s opinion was requested by a regional court in Warsaw, which was worried that the appointment and termination procedure compromised the presumption of innocence in cases adjudicated by minister-seconded judges.
The CJEU found “a number of factors” that could empower the justice minister to influence judges and thus “may give rise to doubts concerning their independence.” It said appointments and terminations of a judge should be made “on the basis of criteria known in advance and must contain an appropriate statement of reasons.” Under the current procedures, the criteria are not public at all and the minister doesn’t have to explain his or her decision to withdraw the secondment.
The European court also noted that while a judge has to consent to be seconded by the minister, the termination can be done without one, which “may have effects similar to those of a disciplinary penalty.”
The minister’s role as head of the prosecution is problematic in the context of judge appointments, since it calls into question the impartiality of prosecution and trial, the CJEU said.
Lastly, there is an issue with seconded judges’ involvement in disciplinary proceedings brought against other judges. They serve as deputies to the Disciplinary Officer for Ordinary Court Judges, also appointed by the minister of justice. The arrangement could cast doubt on “the imperviousness of the other members of the adjudicating panels concerned to external factors,” the EU court said.
The combination of factors gave the CJEU reason to believe that minister-seconded judges “are not provided with the guarantees and the independence which all judges should normally enjoy” in a member-state of the EU. The minister’s power “cannot be considered compatible with the obligation to comply with the requirement of independence.”
Considering the circumstances, the court added, “the presumption of innocence may be jeopardised” in cases presided over by judges such as these in Poland.
The disputed procedure is part of a sweeping reform of the judicial system, which put the conservative Polish government at loggerheads with the EU. The opinion is the latest blow dealt to Poland in the ongoing conflict.
Last month, the CJEU imposed a €500,000 ($568,000) per day fine on Warsaw for ignoring a previous order from the court in a case regarding a mining operation. Poland called the ruling part of a “political blackmail” campaign by Brussels.
The EU and Poland have long been entrenched in conflicts over domestic policies which officials in Brussels say go against the union’s rules. Warsaw, among other things, has been accused of compromising the rule of law, discriminating against the LGBT community, and curbing freedom of the press. The Polish government says the EU is attempting to encroach upon its national sovereignty.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — On 16 June, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for just under four hours in Geneva. This was Mr. Biden’s first meeting with Mr. Putin during his presidency and Biden is the fifth US President with whom Putin has held a summit.
Expectations for the summit were characterized as low by both sides in advance and assessed a bit more positively after the conclusion of the meeting. The meeting presented an opportunity for both leaders to present grievances and warnings to the other (and show toughness to their domestic constituencies). Other than presenting the opportunity to blow off steam, the results of the meeting appear modest: the agreement to return ambassadors to their posts, to resume bilateral arms control discussions, to conduct discussions on “strategic stability” and to hold unspecified consultations on cyber. In typical fashion, Mr. Putin rejected all of Mr. Biden’s assertions about Russian actions and made counter accusations referencing hostile US actions.
Of the deliverables from the summit, cyber will no doubt turn out to be the most problematic area for follow up. Mr. Biden apparently delivered to Mr. Putin a list of 16 US critical infrastructure sectors that should be considered “off limits” for cyberattacks, e.g., “red lines” not to be crossed without the risk of significant retaliation. For his part, Mr. Putin asserted that it is Russia that is the victim of cyberattacks originating from the territory of the US and it’s NATO partners and also is the victim of attempts to interfere with Russian elections. The challenge in cyber discussions going forward will center around three areas: differing interpretations of the relevance of deterrence theory in today’s cyber environment, attribution, and control.
Mr. Biden’s firm comments to Mr. Putin on recent cyberattacks against the US such as the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipelines (Mr. Biden is said to have asked Mr. Putin how he would react if Russia’s pipelines were hit?) and his provision of a list of “off limits” US infrastructure entities suggests a deep belief in this administration that Russia can be deterred from engaging in future conduct of cyber operations against US targets or “sanctioning” attacks originating from the territory of the Russian Federation by criminal groups.
Unfortunately, it is highly likely that either Mr. Putin nor those who control the levers of Russian cyber operations agree that deterrence theory applies. Deterrence only works when both sides know the other is capable of – and willing to – cause significant harm to the other.
The Russian side likely believes (and may have amply demonstrated) that the US is disproportionately vulnerable to cyber risk at every level of its economic, societal, and political infrastructure whereas Russia is not. There is a reason the use of cyber tools has become a central feature of Russian strategic doctrine. They work and seem a legitimate tool that falls short of conventional war. Hybrid warfare using cyber tools, the Russian side would argue, is no different than the economic warfare Russia is experiencing from sanctions imposed by the US its allies.
For full access to the article, sign up to become a Cipher Brief member for just $10/mo.
“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” – Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62 No.
Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national-security focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Level I Member .
Controversial psychologist and author Jordan Peterson claimed Western countries had no “moral right” to force developing nations to reduce pollution output, noting instead that improving their economies was key.
During an appearance on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ show on Thursday, the Canadian professor noted that the focus of climate change policies should be on incentivizing the development of cheap energy in poorer polluter countries.
“The best long term solution is to try to make developing countries as rich as possible, and the best way to do that is not control their pollution output, but to help them develop the cheapest energy they can possibly manage as fast as they possibly can,” Peterson said.
The debate saw UK undersecretary for employment Mims Davies suggest that measures taken to tackle climate change should not come at the “expense of developing countries.” But Peterson countered that it “absolutely, 100% will be [at their expense].”
I don’t think we have any moral right in the West at all to do that.
He also criticized the recent COP26 climate change conference for failing to explore ideas on how best to improve national economies in the developing world, noting that he saw “very little of that sort of idea” coming out of the UN summit.
In the final hours of the two-week conference, China and India had intervened to soften the wording around the use of coal in the Glasgow Pact. The two countries demanded a change in the final text of the agreement that called for coal to be phased out, revising this to “phasing down unabated coal.”
The move prompted COP26 president and UK minister Alok Sharma to declare that China and India would have to “justify” their actions to countries that were more vulnerable to global warming effects. However, officials in both Beijing and New Delhi have countered that the criticism was unfair.
The Philippine government has accused the Chinese Coast Guard of unleashing water cannon on two supply ships in a disputed stretch of the South China Sea, claiming its boats were blocked and forced to turn around.
Manila’s Department of Foreign Affairs detailed the encounter in a statement on Wednesday, alleging that a pair of supply boats en route to the Ayungin Shoal – also known as the Second Thomas Shoal – were stopped by three Chinese vessels and “water cannoned” before they could reach their destination.
“Fortunately, no one was hurt; but our boats had to abort their resupply mission,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said, adding that the department had conveyed its “outrage, condemnation and protest of the incident” to Beijing’s envoy to the Philippines, Huang Xilian.
The acts of the Chinese Coast Guard vessels are illegal. China has no law enforcement rights in and around these areas. They must take heed and back off.
Though both China and the Philippines claim territorial rights to the Ayungin Shoal, The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in the latter country’s favor in 2016. And despite Chinese objections, the Philippines has occupied the area for much longer, after its military purposely grounded a naval vessel on the shoal in 1999.
[3] I reminded China that a public vessel is covered by the Philippines-United States Mutual Defense Treaty.
Manila was also quick to note that the supply ships are “covered by the Philippines-United States Mutual Defense Treaty,” a pact inked with Washington in 1951 that calls for a US military response to any attack on the country, including “island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean, its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft.”
Beijing so far has not commented on the alleged run-in.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
MADRID, Nov 19 (IPS) – Kailash Satyarthi,? an Indian social reformer and co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, spoke in a recent international forum about the devastating impacts of child labour.
An Argentinian woman has become the second-ever HIV-infected person whose immune system helped defeat the virus without requiring additional medical treatment. She was first diagnosed with the AIDS-causing infection in 2013.
Scientists have dubbed the 30-year-old mother the “Esperanza patient,” after her hometown. The word ‘esperanza’ translates to ‘hope’ in English. Publishing their findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal on Monday, the researchers said the discovery boosts hope for a “sterilizing cure” for the estimated 38 million people with the life-long infection.
“I enjoy being healthy,” the Esperanza patient told NBC News over email. “I have a healthy family. I don’t have to medicate, and I live as though nothing has happened. This already is a privilege.”
The study found no intact remnants of the virus in the 1.5 billion blood and tissue cells the researchers analyzed – confirming the discovery first announced in March at an international meeting of HIV experts.
No additional information about the woman has been made public, but she was described at the time as “athletic and beautiful” and revealed to have an HIV-negative boyfriend and newborn baby.
Only one other person, identified in August 2020 as 67-year-old Loreen Willenberg from San Francisco, has been confirmed to have overcome the virus without medical intervention. The two women have been labeled ‘elite controllers’, referring to a rare subset of HIV patients who show no signs of the infection despite not undergoing antiretroviral treatments.
Typically, an HIV-infected person requires constant drug therapy to prevent the virus from attaching to their immune cells’ DNA and replicating. But, in the eight years since she was diagnosed, the Esperanza patient only received medication for six months during pregnancy to ensure her baby would be healthy.
In all, there have been four patients cured of HIV, two of whom – the ‘Berlin patient’ Timothy Ray Brown and the ‘London patient’ Adam Castillejo – were also cancer patients who received risky bone marrow transplants from donors with HIV-resistant genes. However, the success of their procedures is yet to be replicated.
“This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it,” Dr. Xu Yu, an immunologist at the Ragon Institute in Boston, who co-authored the study, told NBC.
Nadya Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, won a writing competition for her letter to UN chief António Guterres, in which she addressed the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how indigenous communities and youth are marginalized in global conversations on climate crisis.
The Islamic State terrorist group is tearing a path across Afghanistan, establishing itself in “nearly all” of its provinces while increasing attacks more than five-fold in the past year, the UN’s envoy to the country has warned.
Addressing the UN Security Council on Wednesday, the body’s special representative for Afghanistan Deborah Lyons spoke of a major Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) surge through the war-torn country, claiming the jihadist group has now expanded nationwide.
“Once limited to a few provinces and the capital, ISKP now seems to be present in nearly all provinces, and increasingly active,” Lyons said, referring to the group’s Afghanistan-based ‘Khorasan’ faction. She added that so far in 2021, IS has carried out 334 attacks, up from just 60 last year.
The envoy’s comments came just hours after an Islamic State bombing erupted in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood of the Afghan capital, killing one and wounding six others, according to Reuters.
Since taking over as the government following a chaotic US withdrawal and the outright collapse of the American-backed administration in Kabul last summer, the Taliban has struggled to keep the terrorist group at bay, Lyons said. Though she noted that the Taliban insists it is “waging a concerted campaign” against IS and is making “genuine efforts to present itself as a government,” she said its response “appears to rely heavily on extrajudicial detentions and killings.”
Despite the rise in IS attacks in recent months, however, Lyons said the overall security situation in Afghanistan has improved since the end of the US war, which stretched on for two decades.
In addition to the terrorism issue, the UN representative also cited broader concerns for the country in the coming months, warning of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” driven by a litany of causes, including foreign sanctions – which she said have “paralyzed” the local banking system – as well as growing levels of food shortages due to famine and a failing economy, among other factors.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The Chinese foreign ministry has lashed out at Lithuania after the small Baltic Sea nation approved the opening of the Taiwan Representative Office in Vilnius. Beijing says it undermines its One China policy.
Beijing was disappointed that Lithuania had proceeded to grant Taiwan permission to open its ‘representative office’ in Vilnius despite “China’s strong opposition and repeated persuasion,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing on Friday. Taiwan had opened its mission in Vilnius the previous day.
Zhao called the move a violation of the One China principle, which he said is undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while grossly interfering in its internal affairs. The spokesman reminded Lithuania that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory and the Beijing government has sole legal authority.
As to what necessary measures China will take, you may wait and see. The Lithuanian side shall reap what it sows.
In a “stern warning” to the Taiwanese authorities, Zhao then added that “seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ by soliciting foreign support is a totally misguided attempt that is doomed to fail.”
In August, Lithuania announced that the diplomatic outpost would be named the “Taiwan Representative Office,” angering China. Taiwan’s diplomatic branches – in countries that have de facto relations with the island’s authorities – are normally called “Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices.”
China demanded that Lithuania recall its ambassador from China, which it did. Beijing then withdrew its envoy to the Baltic state.
Chinese officials have repeatedly called on Western nations, notably the UK and US, to stop interfering in Beijing’s internal affairs, stressing that they consider Taiwan to be part of China.
The European Union’s top court has ruled that Hungary’s 2018 law aimed at criminalizing aiding illegal immigrants who are claiming asylum violates the “rights safeguarded” by the bloc’s legislature.
The Hungarian legislation, passed in 2018, sought to punish anyone “facilitating illegal immigration” with a year in prison, under a bill dubbed the “Stop Soros” law. Hungary’s government justified it at the time by arguing that migrants illegally entering the country threatened its national security.
In the ruling, handed down on Tuesday, the European Court of Justice declared that “criminalizing such activities impinges on the exercise of the rights safeguarded by the EU legislature in respect of the assistance of applicants for international protection.”
The EU’s advocate general, Athanasios Rantos, had urged the court to make such a judgement back in February, claiming the introduction of the legislation meant that “Hungary has failed to fulfil its obligations under the [bloc’s] Procedures Directive.”
It became known as the Stop Soros law after billionaire philanthropist George Soros became a vocal opponent of the Hungarian government’s opposition to migration. The administration, in turn, accused Soros of orchestrating migration to Europe, with the Open Society Foundation, run by the philanthropist, closing its operation in the country in response.
Hungary, under the leadership of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has repeatedly clashed with the EU in recent years over its strong stance on immigration and concerns from the bloc about threats to the rule of law in the country.
At the end of 2020, a dispute between Hungary and Poland and the EU risked derailing the bloc’s budget, as both member states were threatening to veto it over their view that the EU was attempting to interfere in their domestic affairs. Ultimately, the EU backed down, agreeing to a compromise with Budapest and Warsaw to ensure the budget secured the support of all 27 member states.
Despite acknowledging the EU court’s ruling, Hungary’s government defended its right to challenge any foreign-funded non-government organizations that are attempting to “promote migration.”
“Hungary’s position on migration remains unchanged: Help should be taken where the problem is, instead of bringing the problem here,” Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs said, adding that the country will challenge outside entities “seeking to gain political influence and interference.”
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
