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A Polish Perspective on Collective Civil Proceedings: Reluctance to Follow EU Recommendations?
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- By Anna Piszcz
- Edited by Bart Krans, Anna Nylund
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- Book:
- Procedural Autonomy Across Europe
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 30 April 2020
- Print publication:
- 30 January 2020, pp 139-164
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In Poland, there exist a few systems and hierarchies of state courts (as well as the State Tribunal and the Constitutional Tribunal) with hugely varied procedures and differentiated structures. The Polish judicial system consists of the Supreme Court, administrative courts (including the Supreme Administrative Court), military courts and ordinary courts (civil cases, among others, are dealt with by them). Ordinary courts include 321 district courts (sądy rejonowe), 45 regional courts (sądy okręgowe) and 11 courts of appeal (sądy apelacyjne). They are organised into divisions, first and foremost criminal divisions and civil divisions; judges are usually specialised in certain fields of law. Decisions of district courts can be appealed to a competent regional court and decisions adopted by regional courts as courts of first instance to a competent court of appeal (two-instance proceedings).
There is one thing on which both Polish EU-sceptics and Polish EU-enthusiasts must agree: for over a dozen years Polish civil law, including civil procedural law, has been undergoing intensive EU-Europeanisation. The main focus of this chapter is on the relationship between EU law and Polish civil procedural law in the area of collective civil proceedings; the impact of other European fora on Polish law, including the impact of the European Court of Human Rights, are not going to be analysed therein.
The normative (formal) Europeanisation is the process whereby domestic civil law is adapted to conform to EU rules and may be related to substantive laws, the institutional design of administration of justice, as well as procedural laws. The first and second are beyond the scope of this chapter and the latter may be associated with the phenomenon traditionally branded as national procedural autonomy. According to Rewe/Comet doctrine, in the absence of EU rules on the subject, it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to determine the procedural framework (procedural autonomy) governing actions at law intended to ensure the protection of the rights which citizens derive from the direct effect of EU law, but this national design must fully respect the EU principles of equivalence and effectiveness.
Polish Civil Proceedings: How Much Europeanised?
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- By Anna Piszcz, professor at the University of Białystok (Poland), Faculty of Law
- Edited by Anna Nylund, H. B. Krans
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- Book:
- The European Union and National Civil Procedure
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 19 December 2017
- Print publication:
- 29 July 2016, pp 115-130
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Summary
Introductory Ideas
National procedural systems have always played an important role in enforcing European Union (EU) law. The details of these systems have differed substantially in different legal cultures and over time. The common elements that emerge in them are growing in number which can be associated with what is usually called ‘Europeanisation’. If a necessary impulse for domestic change is provided to countries by the EU, it is justified, however, to use names ‘EU-Europeanisation’ or ‘Unionisation’, as put directly by A. Lenschow. Largo sensu Europeanisation, on the other hand, is not limited to the EU-Europeanisation and EU effects on domestic developments. There may be other international impacts from other European fora. The impact of the European Court of Human Rights within European countries can be interpreted as an instance of largo sensu Europeanisation. In Poland, the European Convention of Human Rights was incorporated into laws in early 1990s. The influence of the Court interpreting the Convention on Polish laws can be seen in the introduction of the legal framework for the summons for injunctions against delays in proceedings in 2004 and its significant amendment in 2009. However, these changes are not going to be analysed in this chapter.
‘The EU represents a set of rules, an arena and a discursive framework for domestic actors,’ Lenschow writes, ‘in short a point of departure for impulses that flow top-down, horizontally and ‘round-about’ when impacting on the domestic level’.2 According to Bulmer and Radaelli, ‘Europeanisation is not simply about formal policy rules but about less tangible aspects, such as beliefs and values’. This chapter will focus on the top-down impact of the EU on civil proceedings, ie the penetration of the European dimension into national legal framework for civil proceedings in Poland. It will regard, first of all, the normative (formal) EU-Europeanisation as the process whereby domestic laws and regulations are adapted to conform to EU rules. The normative EU-Europeanisation refers to procedural laws, substantive laws as well as institutional design of administration of justice but the two latter are beyond the scope of this chapter. National law established by the Polish legislature, which is a part of the Polish legal system of a multi-centre nature (multilevel system), binding in domestic territory along with the directly applicable EU laws, is being Europeanised in a literal sense.