5/3/2023 0 Comments Bitcoin expert catharinaRather, European states should learn from the challenges in Poland and other countries to critically review the constitutional and legal framework of their own national judiciaries. While such threats to judicial independence in individual states are a fundamental problem for European co-operation based on shared values of democracy, the rule of law and human rights, European states should not wait for remedies to be found on the European level. Poland’s reforms of its judiciary (some of them still in draft stage) are the latest and gravest example of this European crisis. Events in countries like Hungary, Ukraine, Slovakia and Turkey should be mentioned in this context. Nevertheless, in recent years, a number of challenges to these accepted values have emerged in different countries all over Europe. The rule of law, judicial independence and separation of powers are values guaranteed in constitutions of member states of the Council of Europe. Therefore, the court of the executing state should not only halt or suspend judicial cooperation in the event that persuasive pieces of evidence point to a violation of the values shared by the EU and the Member States in the issuing state, but it should also freeze the case awaiting a resolution of the matter from political actors. At the same time, the political responsibility for balancing diverse EU constitutional principles needs to be borne by democratically elected institutions. In our view, judicial authorities ultimately have an independent responsibility to put a halt to surrenders, in case the wanted person’s fair trial rights are put in peril due to a general lack of judicial independence in the issuing state. The Celmer case calls for us to reflect on the question what role judicial authorities can and should play in ensuring compliance with democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights (DRF) in other EU Member States. Judicial Independence as a Precondition for Mutual Trust We especially disagree when Molbæk-Steensig implies that we somehow legitimise a far-right narrative designed to limit the system of human rights protection in Europe or subscribe to a reductionist concept of democracy. We certainly agree on this point, but we cannot agree with Molbæk-Steensig when she claims that we – Denmark’s national human rights institution – played a passive, or even negative, role during the making of the declaration. Molbæk-Steensig agrees with most commentators that the declaration does not reflect the Danish government’s “strong discourse of sovereignty and democratic deficit in the Danish debate“. In her blog post “Is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark?”, Helga Molbæk-Steensig analyses the making of the Copenhagen Declaration the most important outcome of the Danish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Copenhagen Declaration – a Reply to Helga Molbæk-Steensig This gets closer to diagnosing the condition, but in its ambiguity about the pressure point, fails to underscore that this is essentially a crisis made in Italy, and, if at all, to be resolved there, including a full and frank debate about membership of the single currency and even the European Union. On the other hand, there are those who doubt its wisdom, and offer a broader indictment of the pressure brought to bear on the Italian government as a result of being in an overly rigid Eurozone. On the one hand, there are those who consider legitimate the President’s discretionary use of power, partly in light of the pressure that would be brought to bear by the financial markets should Italy opt for exiting the single currency. Two particular threads of opinion are identified here and some doubts cast about them. The recent crisis surrounding the Italian President’s refusal to appoint a Finance Minister considered likely to pursue an agenda of ‘Italexit’ has sparked a great deal of constitutional commentary.
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