Andrew Tettenborn

Poland’s top court has finally called the EU’s bluff

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For many years, the EU has posed as a kind of overbearing imperial leviathan, which insists its law has to prevail over that of the states that make it up. Now its bluff appears to have finally been called: the Polish constitutional court in Warsaw ruled yesterday that some EU laws are in conflict with the country’s constitution. Understandably, Brussels is not happy. But what can it do about it?

The background to all this is a spat between Brussels and Warsaw about whether Poland’s machinery for appointing judges to its own courts is EU-compliant. Brussels says it is not, because under it judicial impartiality cannot be guaranteed. This, it says, is contrary to EU law – and it has a judgment of the EU Court of Justice to back it up. 

But Warsaw says this is none of the EU’s business, since the whole matter of judicial appointments is governed by the Polish constitution of 1997; sure enough, it has a contrary judgment from the Polish courts supporting its case. 

To break the impasse – and make it clear who was boss in Poland – some weeks ago the Polish government asked its constitutional tribunal to rule on whether EU law as laid down by the EU Court of Justice could ever override the Polish constitution. The finding yesterday was, quite simply, that it couldn’t. It followed that whatever might happen in Brussels – and whatever the EU treaties might say – Polish judges had to follow the Polish constitution.

The Warsaw court’s judgment may well have changed the nature of the bloc for ever

Who is right in law is unclear. The EU and the Euro-elite, raised from infancy on the idea of the EU as a sublime and unique legal-political order, regard the Polish position as an obvious heresy. On the other hand, there is much legal (and for that matter democratic) logic in the argument of the Polish court: the ability of a government to surrender powers to the EU by joining it derives from the constitution establishing it.

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