On March 26, 2020, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) issued a judgment of inadmissibility in Joined Cases C-558/18 and C-563/18 Miasto Łowicz and Prokurator Generalny. According to a press release issued by the Court, these two cases were referred to the CJEU by two regional courts in Łódź and in Warsaw, Poland, and are part of the ongoing saga of cases brought to the CJEU in relation to the independence of the Polish judiciary in light of several Polish legislative reforms. These two cases were adjudged to be inadmissible by the Court for three main reasons. First, the Court held that the domestic disputes were not connected with the application of EU law. Second, the Court stated that, although it had previously ruled similar questions to be admissible before it, the scope of the questions referred in the present two cases was outside of EU jurisdiction. In particular, the Court pointed out that, in those admissible cases, the questions referred concerned the interpretation of procedural provisions of EU law that had to be resolved so that the referring courts could arrive at a judgment. Finally, the CJEU stated that answering the questions referred would not provide the referring courts with an interpretation of EU law that would enable the referring courts to resolve the disputes before them. These conclusions led the CJEU to hold that:

it is not apparent from the orders for reference that there is a connecting factor between the provision of EU law to which the questions referred for a preliminary ruling relate and the disputes in the main proceedings, and which makes it necessary to have the interpretation sought so that the referring courts may, by applying the guidance provided by such an interpretation, make the decisions needed to rule on those disputes (para 52).

The Court therefore ruled that both cases were inadmissible.