3.

Must EU law — in particular the provisions referred to in question 2 — be interpreted as precluding legislation of a Member State, such as Article 110(2a) of the Law on the system of the ordinary courts and Article 27(1)(1a) of the Law on the Supreme Court, according to which cases relating to authorisation for the criminal prosecution or deprivation of liberty (detention) of a judge of a national court fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of a body such as the Disciplinary Chamber at both first and second instance, taking in particular into account (individually or jointly) the following facts: (a) the establishment of the Disciplinary Chamber coincided with a change in the rules for selecting members of a body such as the Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa (National Council for the Judiciary, ‘the NCJ’), which is involved in judicial appointments and upon whose proposal all members of the Disciplinary Chamber were appointed; (b) the national legislature has made it impossible to transfer to the Disciplinary Chamber current judges of the national court of last instance (the Supreme Court) within which that Chamber operates, such that only new members appointed upon the proposal of the newly selected NCJ may sit in the Disciplinary Chamber; (c) the Disciplinary Chamber enjoys a particularly high degree of autonomy within the Supreme Court; (d) the Supreme Court, in its rulings implementing the judgment of 19 November 2019, A. K. and Others (Independence of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court) (C-585/18, C-624/18 and C-625/18, EU:C:2019:982), confirmed that the newly selected NCJ is not independent of the legislature and of the executive and that the Disciplinary Chamber is not a ‘tribunal’ within the meaning of Article 47 of the Charter, Article 6 of the ECHR and Article 45(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland; (e) a request for authorisation for criminal prosecution or deprivation of liberty (detention) of a judge of a national court is, in principle, submitted by a public prosecutor whose superior is an executive body such as the Minister Sprawiedliwości (Minister for Justice), which executive body may issue binding instructions to public prosecutors concerning procedural acts, and at the same time members of the Disciplinary Chamber and of the newly selected NCJ have, as the Supreme Court found in the rulings referred to in point 2(d), particularly close links to the legislature and to the executive, and thus the Disciplinary Chamber cannot be regarded as a third party in relation to the parties to the proceedings; (f) a request for authorisation for criminal prosecution or deprivation of liberty (detention) of a judge of a national court is, in principle, submitted by a public prosecutor whose superior is an executive body such as the Minister Sprawiedliwości (Minister for Justice), which executive body may issue binding instructions to public prosecutors concerning procedural acts, and at the same time members of the Disciplinary Chamber and of the newly selected NCJ have, as the Supreme Court found in the rulings referred to in point 2(d), particularly close links to the legislature and to the executive, and thus the Disciplinary Chamber cannot be regarded as a third party in relation to the parties to the proceedings;