Status: 10/08/2021 11:27 a.m.
The judgment of the Polish Constitutional Court provokes violent reactions. EU Justice Commissioner Reynders announced that he would exhaust all means to protect EU law. Ex-Council President Tusk called for protests in Warsaw.
Former EU Council President Donald Tusk does not want to accept that Poland’s constitutional court has declared parts of EU law to be incompatible with the national constitution. “I call on everyone who wants to defend a European Poland to come to Palace Square in Warsaw at 6 p.m. on Sunday,” he wrote on Twitter. “Only together can we stop them.” Tusk is the acting chairman of Poland’s largest opposition party, the liberal-conservative Civic Platform.
“Risk of Leaving”
The decision of the highest Polish court met with a negative response in Brussels and in several EU countries. The EU Commission reacted with concern to the process. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said that “all means” will be used to ensure that EU law is respected in Poland. The principle that EU law takes precedence over national law and the binding character of decisions by the EU judiciary are central to the confederation of states.
“There is a de facto risk of leaving the European Union,” said France’s European Minister Clement Beaune to the broadcaster BFM TV. Even though he didn’t want Poland to leave the EU, he added. However, economic sanctions are an option to respond. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the Polish government was playing with fire.
The European political spokeswoman for the Greens in Germany, Franziska Brantner, called for consequences after the verdict. “Now is the turn of the EU Commission and must immediately draw clear and unambiguous consequences in order to secure the legal unity of the EU. For this it needs the full support of Germany. The time to appease is over,” she told the Reuters news agency.
Judgment means new legal territory
Poland’s constitutional court ruled yesterday that central elements of the European treaties were incompatible with the Polish constitution. The court underlined that it not only has the right to review the constitutionality of EU law, but also the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). EU law does not always take precedence over national law, and with their action against Warsaw the EU institutions are exceeding their competences, said the presiding judge Julia Przylebska.
In the proceedings, she stated that the constitutional courts of other countries had already questioned the competences of the European Court of Justice: the Federal Constitutional Court, for example, secured a right of final decision in an emergency. To declare all the basic rules of the Union as subordinate in case of doubt, however, means new legal territory.
Constitutional Court under suspicion
The Polish constitutional court itself has been under suspicion of bias since a controversial reorganization. The European Court of Human Rights recently even expressed doubts in a judgment as to whether the Constitutional Court can judge freely and fairly; it is partly composed illegally.
Poland’s national-conservative PiS government has been restructuring the judiciary for years. Critics accuse her of putting judges under pressure. Due to the reforms, the EU Commission has already opened several infringement proceedings against Warsaw and filed suits with the European Court of Justice. There are also fines and the withholding of the payment of EU funds to Poland.
With information from Jan Pallokat, ARD-Studio Vienna