The European Commission launched infringement proceedings against Poland on Wednesday. Brussels has castigated orders issued by the Polish Constitutional Court which challenged the primacy of European law over national law.
What to revive a little more the tensions between the European Union and Warsaw. “We consider that this case law (of the Polish Constitutional Court, editor’s note) violated the general principles of autonomy, primacy, efficiency and uniform application of Union law, and the binding judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU, ”said European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni. The EU executive also expressed its doubts about the “independence and impartiality” of the Polish court.
The Commission has therefore sent a letter to the Polish government, which has two months to reply. The objective: to force the conservative party in power to reverse some of the recent judicial reforms. Last October, the Constitutional Court had in fact considered certain European treaties “incompatible” with the Polish constitution.
Financial penalties?
This infringement procedure can lead to a referral to the Court of Justice of the EU and even to financial penalties. “The trend towards the development of democratic centralism, the bureaucratic centralism of Brussels is progressing unfortunately, but it must be put to an end”, for his part denounced the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after the announcement of this sanction.
“If the European Commission misunderstands the principle of the powers conferred by Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union (which delimits the competences of the Union and of the States), it is obviously a problem”, he said. he adds.
This sanction is added to a list of heavy disputes between Poland and the European Union for several years, in particular on questions of judicial independence. Warsaw was notably condemned last October to a fine of one million euros per day which it had to pay to the European Commission.
Poland is accused of not having closed the disciplinary chamber of the Polish Supreme Court, an organ accused by Brussels of undermining the autonomy of magistrates. Warsaw, however, had expressed its refusal to pay. The government continues to justify its judicial reforms by the need to fight corruption in judges.