Featured News
Marking the date of Giovanni Falcone’s assassination by the Mafia in 1992, MEDEL pronounced the 23rd of May as the alert day for the independence of justice in Europe. On this date, we are invited to reflect on the need for an independent and effective justice all over Europe and its importance for the safeguard of European citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
Very dark signs have arisen all over Europe in recent years, inside and outside the European Union. However, in no place as in Turkey did we witness such an orchestrated and premeditated campaign to completely destroy the independence of the Judiciary and the Rule of Law. Since the attempted Coup d’État of July 15th, 2016, all Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers who had constantly struggled for an independent justice have been persecuted, arrested, dismissed and have seen their property seized without any previous due process and with absolutely no guarantees of defense.
Euronews, the European news network who also broadcasts in Turkish language, has just released news about MEDEL's ebook of the letters in Turkish.
Here is the link:
In the last month of March, MEDEL organized a cycle of conferences about four topics which in our view should be at the core of the debate in the electoral campaign for the upcoming European Parliament elections: immigration; populism; austerity and social rights; Rule of Law.
We gathered most of the speeches and presentations of those four conferences in the ebook that can be found HERE.
MEDEL was represented by its president today at the hearing held at the "Grande Chambre" of the European Court of Justice, in Luxembourg, on joint cases C-585/18, C-624/18 CP and C-625/18, regarding the lowering of retirement age of Polish Judges.
MEDEL was present today at the final conference of the "Rule of Law Project" of the European Judicial Training Network, held in the European Court of Justice, in Luxembourg.
The president of MEDEL was one of the facilitators of the workshop dedicated to the role of Judicial Associations in promoting the Rule of Law.
On April 3rd, 2019, the European Commission decided to launch an infringement procedure regarding the new disciplinary regime for judges in Poland.
MEDEL welcomes this decision, stressing that the mechanism of art. 258. TFUE is the only one with the effective potential to reverse the destruction of the Rule of Law in Poland.
The first call from MEDEL to take this action was addressed to the First Vice‑President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, on February 21st, 2019. Today it has become clearly evident that the unprecedented actions that have been undermining judicial independence in Poland need urgent attention.
The situation of the Romanian Judiciary has recently witnessed another episode that reveals the worrying path towards the degradation of the Rule of Law in that country.
MEDEL sees with much concern the revision of the three basic laws of the Judiciary (the Statutes of Judges and Prosecutors, the organisation of Courts and of the Prosecution Service and the organisation of the Superior Council of Magistracy) – that came into force between July and October 2018 – and the proposed changes of the criminal and criminal procedure. As Vice-President Frans Timmermans said in the European Parliament on October 3rd, 2018, these changes put at serious risk the independence and effectiveness of the Judiciary, especially in the fight against corruption.
Your Excellency, MEDEL – Magistrats Européens Pour la Démocratie et les Libertés, (a European Non-Governmental Organization that currently gathers 23 associations of Judges and Prosecutors coming from 16 different European Countries, representing more than 15.000 magistrates), has been following closely the ongoing attack against the independence of the Judiciary in Poland.
We have had the opportunity of addressing those issues and expressing our support for the decision taken by the European Commission to press charges against Poland before the European Court of Justice, in an email sent to you on October 1st, 2018.
MEDEL representatives were invited to meet with the CVM (Cooperation and Verification Mechanism) team to deepen the discussions regarding the progress reports on the Romanian and Bulgarian judiciary systems, Mr. William Sleath stated on behalf of the European Commission in a letter sent to MEDEL on 28 Jan. 2019.
The letter from the European Commission was a reply to a letter sent by MEDEL, on 14 December 2018, to Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the European Commission) and Ms. Vera Jourová (European Commissioner of Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality) regarding the 2018 reports of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) on Bulgaria and Romania.
MEDEL was present today in Belgrade, in the conference "Civil Society for Accountable Governance", organized by CRTA - Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability.
Filipe Marques took the floor in the opening plenary and had an impulse statement at the Working Group 3 - Changes to the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia.
