A joint project of three Polish non-governmental organizations was launched on 4 October entitled “Civil Monitoring of Candidates for Judges”. The program’s objective is to enable the civil society’s participation in a debate regarding candidates for the positions of judges at courts and tribunals of the highest instance. (06-OCT-06)

Written by Marta Lempicka/HRH Warsaw

The project’s initiators are the Stefan Batory Foundation, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Polish Section of the International Commission of Jurists. The program’s objective is to enable the civil society’s participation in a debate regarding candidates for the positions of judges at courts and tribunals of the highest instance: the Constitutional Tribunal, Supreme Court, State Tribunal of Poland, Supreme Administrative Court, European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, as well as the European Tribunal of Justice in Luxembourg.

In Poland discussions are held on candidacies for many state positions, so far however a tradition has not been established of public debates regarding candidates for the positions of judges. The project’s initiators wish to change this practice. They wish to create a situation where the process of selecting judges becomes transparent and provides an opportunity for various circles, including non-governmental organizations and legal corporations, law departments and other interested institutions, to take the floor. The project’s premise is also to include the civil society in the process of selecting judges. Among the planned actions the organizations implementing this project assume inter alia: collecting and publishing information about the proposed candidates, asking them to complete a questionnaire and organizing “public hearings” of candidates.             

The first undertaking performed as part of the project consists in monitoring elections for the Constitutional Tribunal in 2006.