’Some EU treaty articles to be incompatible with Poland's constitution’: Constitutional Tribunal
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Poland's top court has rejected the principle of the primacy of EU law over national legislation in certain judicial matters, in a major challenge to the EU's legal framework. The judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal on the application of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was issued only at the fifth hearing on this subject. The ruling was postponed four times.
On October 7, the TC president Julia Przyłębska assessed that in the event of "a conflict of European law and judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland", the primacy is given to the Polish Basic Law.
The verdict was not passed unanimously but by a majority of votes. Dissenting opinions were submitted by judges Piotr Pszczółkowski and Jarosław Wyrembak.
It is not known now how the Polish government will deal with the judgments of the CJEU. Some Polish lawyers fear that the current authorities in Warsaw may want to use the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal to avoid executing judgments of the EU Tribunal that they do not like.
In the past, it has already happened several times that the constitutional courts of some Member States have ruled on the superiority of the local constitution over EU law, but this was not a basis for ignoring the judgments of the CJEU.
The decision of the Constitutional Tribunal was criticized by the opposition.
“By law, we are already outside the European Union. It is the responsibility of Jarosław Kaczyński and the entire PiS. This is high treason for which they will be personally responsible.,” Andrzej Halicki, MEP of the Civic Platform, assessed.
“The Tribunal of Julia Przyłębska decided that some provisions of the EU treaties are inconsistent with the Constitution. At the dictation of PiS, a great step towards #Polexit has just been taken, a great step in the embrace of Russia," Green MP Małgorzata Tracz wrote on Twitter.
