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The last appointed Polish judge to the #ECJ, Marek Safjan, started his career at the court in 2009. He was reappointed in 2015 for six-year mandate that ended in October 2021.

However, Safjan ended up serving at the Court until January this year, even without a renewed mandate since 2015.

The reason is simple: While #CJEU judges are appointed for limited terms, their mandate only expires when they are replaced by their national successor. Never being replaced, Safjan's term never expired.

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When Safjan, born 1949, retired in January this year, there were still nobody to replace him; his seat at the court was therefore left empty. As a consequence, Poland is not currently represented with a judge at the highest court of the #EU.

Who remains is the Polish Advocate General, Maciej Szpunar, who was appointed as late as in 2018 and whose term was only supposed to end this October.

Szpunar has now made First Advocate General, and like Sefjan he has had no nominated successor.

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The situation is similar in the first instance General Court, where the final two Polish appointments were made in March 2016.

Krystyna Kowalik-Bańczyk was appointed with a term set to end in 2022; Nina Półtorak was only appointed for a five-month term, scheduled to end in August 2016.

With no successor appointed, both are still active at the General Court.

Kowalik-Bańczyk was made President of the Seventh Chamber in September 2022, the month after the expiration of her original mandate.

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So why is Poland not sending judges to the European court? There is an element of self-censorship at play.

The suitability of judge nominees to the #CJEU are assessed by the so-called 255 panel, ensuring a working knowledge of the French language and EU law.

Poland has not had its nominations blocked by this panel; the PiS government was merely uninterested in nominating any candidate who could stand a chance of being considered fit. Instead they refused to make any nominations at all.

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But why does the Polish refusal to appoint judges to the #CJEU continue even today, even after the PiS lost power in the 2023 election?

Polish appointments to the European court must not only be made by the government, but approved by the president. The presidency, of course, is still held by PiS.

Presidential elections in Poland are held again next year.

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Poland's strategy before the #CJEU might appear self-defeating, as the refusal of a single member state to appoint judges to the European court seems to have constituted no significant threat to the European judicial order. Rather, it has passed by largely unnoticed.

On the other hand, one might speculate that it has benefited #Poland, giving Polish judges long and seemingly successful tenures at the CJEU despite the turbulent political situation at home.

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In the same period, Hungary has continued making successful appointments to the court, most lately Zoltán Csehi to the Court of Justice in 2021 and Krisztián Kecsmár and Tihamér Tóth to the General Court in 2022.

It therefore seems there is no inherent impossibility for authoritarian governments to make successful judicial appointments to the #CJEU, even after the introduction of the 255 panel in 2010.

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