Donzallaz alleges SVP plot after court rules affair unlawful

Federal judge Yves Donzallaz has accused his former party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), of trying to remove him from the Supreme Court after it ruled his relationship with fellow judge Beatrice van de Graaf unlawful. Swiss public broadcaster SRF reported that the ruling could provide grounds to reopen cases.

Donzallaz, who left the SVP in 2022 and is now unaffiliated, said the party wanted to replace him with a loyal member to overturn his position that Switzerland’s bilateral agreements with the European Union take precedence over Swiss laws, even when Parliament intended otherwise.

The SVP said Donzallaz was using “smoke screens” to distract from the damage his affair had caused the country’s highest court. Former SVP lawmaker Christoph Mörgeli, now a journalist at Weltwoche, said the relationship was a serious failing at the court and that neither the party nor the magazine had invented or staged it.

Donzallaz said relationships between judges had existed at the court before, but that his had become a national scandal because the SVP wanted him gone. He left the party after a dispute in 2022, so his seat is no longer counted as an SVP position in the court’s political allocation. He appears to want to prevent the party from filling his place in the second public-law division.

Michele Luminati, director of a justice research institute in Lucerne, said Donzallaz was unquestionably an irritant to the SVP, but added that the affair was not fabricated. Lorenz Langer, a law professor who researches judicial independence and democracy at the University of Zurich, said Weltwoche had a political agenda but had not invented the relationship.

Donzallaz said political manoeuvring and media attacks had created a “chilling effect” at the court, with judges fearing for their re-election. He pointed to earlier warnings from the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body that periodic re-elections could threaten judicial independence. Luminati also voiced concern about the relationship between politics and the courts, while Langer said judges increasingly decide issues once considered political. Donzallaz has indicated he may take his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.