“We cannot and we will not allow our common values to be jeopardized,” she said on Tuesday in a debate with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Commission will act.
As specific options, von der Leyen named another infringement procedure, the use of a new procedure to cut EU funds and a renewed application of the so-called Article 7 procedure. The latter could even lead to the withdrawal of Polish voting rights in EU decisions.
The background to the threats from der Leyens is a ruling by the Polish Constitutional Court, according to which parts of EU law are incompatible with Poland’s constitution. The EU Commission regards this decision as highly problematic because it could give the Polish government an excuse to ignore the unpleasant judgments of the ECJ.
The judgment calls into question the foundations of the European Union, criticized von der Leyen in parliament on Tuesday. «It is an immediate challenge to the unity of the European legal order. Only a common legal system enables equal rights, legal security, mutual trust between the member states and the resulting common policy. “