The European Commission has expressed concern over the conclusion by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal that some articles of EU law have no primacy over Polish national law. Judges in Warsaw have thus urged Polish courts not to comply with the hierarchy of laws and treaties that is the basis for the functioning of the EU, British broadcaster BBC reports.
Earlier this year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the new system of selecting judges in Poland, put in place in 2018 by the governing coalition, violated EU law. Reacting to this, in March, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki challenged EU treaties in the Polish Constitutional Tribunal.
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On Thursday, October 7, the latter announced that some EU treaty articles were incompatible with Poland’s constitution. Polish judges, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal stated, should not use EU law to question the independence of their peers.
In a reaction to this, the European Commission said, «EU law has primacy over national law, including constitutional provisions.» «All rulings by the European Court of Justice are binding on all member states’ authorities, including national courts,» it elaborated. As part of the long-lasting dispute between Warsaw and Brussels, in September the Commission called on the the ECJ to impose daily fines on Poland for its failure to suspend the activities of a new Polish Supreme Court chamber that has the power to sanction judges for the content of their rulings, BBC reports.
Poland in row with Brussels over primacy of each other’s law
