The European Court of Human Rights has awarded damages to three Polish judges who were denied promotion by the country’s president nearly two decades ago. The judges’ rights were violated because no reasons were given for blocking the appointments and the decisions were not reviewed.

Sobozyńska and others v Poland centred on then Polish president Lech Kaczyński’s refusal to appoint the three judges to vacant judicial posts despite their success in a selection procedure conducted by the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ), and the absence of any judicial review of that refusal.

Aleksandra Sobczyńska, Adrian Klepacz and Rafał Brukiewicz were working in district courts in junior posts. They applied for appointment as district court judges in 2006 and were approved by the respective general assemblies of the courts to which they they had applied. Their names were put forward by the NCJ to the president, with a motion that they be appointed. 

In 2008, a decision by the president, founder of the Law and Justice party, refusing to appoint nine judicial candidates, including the three claimants, was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Poland. No reasons were given.

The ECtHR judgment acknowledged that this ‘was the first time that a President of the Republic had declined to appoint candidates indicated in the motion by the NCJ’.

It added: ‘The court…considers that the crux of the proceedings in question was the right to a fair procedure in the examination of an application for a judicial post.’

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Finding that the three judges’ claim was ‘neither manifestly ill-founded nor inadmissible’, the judgment said: ‘The decision to refuse to appoint the applicants (junior judges who met the statutory eligibility requirements) without providing any reasons, and the absence of any judicial review of that decision, cannot be regarded – given the importance of the protection of judicial independence – as having been in the interests of a State governed by the rule of law.

‘The court refers in this connection to the relevant international standards, which likewise state that any decision concerning the selection and career of judges – or at least the procedure under which such a decision is made – should be amenable to judicial review.’

Acknowledging that there should be ‘weighty reasons exceptionally justifying the absence of any judicial review’ when the appointment of a judge is at stake, the ECtHR found there had been a violation of the judges’ right of access to a court.

Awarding each of the applicants €13,000, the judgment said the three judges ‘must have sustained non-pecuniary damage for which the finding of a violation of the Convention does not constitute a sufficient remedy’.

 

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