Poland Loses Fight With EU Over Judges' Retirement Ages

(Bloomberg) -- Poland lost another court clash with the European Commission over part of the nationalist government’s sweeping judicial overhaul that cut judges’ retirement ages and discriminated between male and female jurists.The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that the Polish rules introduced in July 2017 also created “directly discriminatory conditions based on sex” by lowering the retirement age to 60 for women and to 65 for men, from 67 for both previously. Tuesday’s decision can’t be appealed.The governing Law & Justice party provoked a string of EU lawsuits for changes that the commission said risked undermining the independence of Poland’s legal system. In a separate case in June, the EU court ruled that changes, which included lowering the retirement age of Supreme Court judges, were illegal.The party had argued that it needed to cleanse the judicial system of judges who were active during the pre-1989 Communist era and create a system it said would deliver more justice for ordinary citizens.The stand-off has put Warsaw at odds with its European allies and risks cuts in EU budget transfers to the bloc’s largest formerly communist nation.While Poland argues it can freely shape its judiciary without kowtowing to Brussels, it has backtracked on the legislation in 2018 and restored equal retirement age for male and female judges.The government doesn’t question EU court decisions but believes it has the right to set rules governing its legal system, the foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday.The EU’s executive sees the independence of courts as one of the founding values of the bloc’s democracies. So far, the commission has won a spate of legal challenges, piling pressure on Warsaw. “This is an important ruling in support of the independence of the judiciary in Poland and beyond, as well as to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender,” the commission said in a statement.The EU authority last month said it would take Poland to court in yet another case, this time over a disciplinary system for judges.The case is: C-192/18, European Commission v. Republic of Poland.(Updates with EU response in second-last paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Luxembourg at sbodoni@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Marek StrzeleckiFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.