Done reading 18k-long ruling in Joined Cases C‑585/18 C‑624/18 and C‑625/18. My overall assessment FWIW: a rich careful judgment which leaves no doubt to referring court new “Disciplinary Chamber” must be found not to satisfy EU law requirements of judicial independence [thread]
2/ Why didn’t ECJ say so explicitly? Because this is a preliminary ruling (PR) case & not an infringement case. To quote Koen Lenaerts: whilst it is for ECJ "to say what the law of the EU is" it is for nat courts "to apply that law to the cases that come before them" in PR cases
3/ By contrast, role of the Advocates General (AG) is to propose to ECJ, in complete independence, a legal solution to the cases for which they are responsible = they can be more explicit/concrete in their (non-binding) opinions 
4/ Did the ECJ depart from the AG’s reasoning? Not substantively but ECJ did refuse to answer Qs referred in C-585/18 and because of limits on its jurisdiction in PR cases ECJ could not be as explicit as AG but ECJ ruling cannot be understood as good news for Polish ruling party
5/ Re @encj_office-suspended Polish National Council of Judiciary: ECJ is strongly implying Polish neo-NCJ lacks sufficient independence from executive/legislature and is failing to *actually* exercise its role of ensuring independence of the courts and of the judiciary
@encj_office 6/ Trivia: ECJ in one strident para essentially and rightly calls out lack of professionalism of Polish neo-NCJ and its deliberate attempt to waste the Court’s time. This is unlikely to lead neo-NCJ to behave properly in future as one cannot shame the shameless
@encj_office 7/ The nonsense bordering on the disrespectful raised by Polish neo-NCJ - no wonder it was suspended from the ENCJ network - supported by Polish gov and public prosecutor as regards the content of the AG Opinion are given – as they should – short drift by ECJ
@encj_office 8/ Minor criticism and yet important: When will AG and ECJ stop referring to attacks on #ruleoflaw and judges as “reforms”? adopting the language autocrats helps them shape narrative. More neutral term of “change(s)” should be used instead of positively connotated “reform(s)”
@encj_office 9/ Looking beyond ruling: rich reasoning will enable not-yet-captured courts/chamber to refuse to recognise jurisdiction of bogus chambers and/or captured courts (eg Polish “Constitutional Tribunal”) established by autocratic governments as they are not "courts" in the 1st place
@encj_office 10/ Many problems however remain: e.g. what to do in situation where referring court is captured by autocratic authorities post issuance of ECJ ruling? What to do when Polish authorities will refuse to comply with forthcoming ruling of not yet captured chamber of Supreme Court?
11/ What to do in a situation where the captured sham constitutional court may be used to give a legal fig-leaf to the government to ignore (unlawfully but autocrats do not care) the forthcoming ruling of not yet captured chamber of the Supreme Court? etc.
12/ Silver lining: ECJ itself will be able to deal directly with issue of bogus "disciplinary chamber" & whole authoritarian disciplinary regime for judges established by Poland's autocratic ruling party in context of infringement action now pending before ECJ
13/ Key question however remains: how much more potentially irreversible damage to rule of law will be done until 3rd rule of law-related infringement ruling against Poland is adopted? Time for EU national govs to do their duties too within Art 7 framework and bilaterally (end)
