The European Commission, Executive Power of the EU, filed this Wednesday (22) with an infringement process against Poland due to the decision of the Polish Constitutional Court which, in October, stated that the bloc tratadoss treaties harm the countrys sovereignty and are incompatible with national legislation.
The European Economics Commissioner, Italian Paolo Gentiloni, said that the commission considers that the decision violates the general principles of autonomy, uniform application of European Union law and the binding decisions of the bloc’s main court, the Court of Justice.
He also stated that the bloc considers that the Polish Constitutional Court no longer responds to the demands of an independent and impartial court, referring to the controversial reform of the Judiciary voted in the country in 2019 and implemented last year.
Among the changes is the creation of a disciplinary chamber for Supreme Court judges, with powers to withdraw immunity, suspend and reduce salaries of members of the court, a measure that has led to the suspension of judges critical of the government. The judiciary thus became an arm of the ruling nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
The EU has already been applying sanctions and pressuring the Polish government to suspend the disciplinary chamber — at the end of October, it ordered Poland to pay a fine of 1 million euros (about R$ 6.5 million) a day in which it continues to fail to comply with the order, for example.
The crisis between the bloc and the central European country escalated with the decision that the EU treaties hurt and were inferior to national decisions. The matter came to the Constitutional Court after Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki questioned whether EU regulation could prevent Poland from reorganizing its judiciary.
About the infringement process initiated by the European Commission on Wednesday, the prime minister said that the EU has misinterpreted the powers granted to the bloc. “I think that more and more European states are seeing that there must be a limit to the competences of the EU,” he said.
Polish Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta called the process an attack on the Constitution and on the country’s sovereignty. “The operation of the subordination of the EU to the constitutional courts is ongoing; the EU Court of Justice wants to judge our Constitution,” wrote Kaleta on social media.
Poland will have two months to respond to the notification letter and comply with what was requested by the EU. If the European Commission is not satisfied with Warsaw’s response, it may send a new opinion, requesting that EU law be enforced, again with a two-month response period.
After that, the Commission can sue Poland in the bloc’s court of law, which could lead to new daily fines for the country.
The clash between Poland and the EU, which the country is part of along with 26 other member states, has also delayed the release of millions of euros of recovery funds from the bloc to Poland, as the European Commission says it is. I need to protect the money from political misuse.
The discussions raised the possibility and fear that the situation would culminate in a ‘polexit’ — an EU divorce similar to brexit. The possibility, however, is seen as unlikely by analysts for several reasons, including the fact that most Poles are in favor of integration with the EU, and the current internal situation, in which the ruling party coalition , the PiS, has a narrow margin of majority in Parliament.
Still, experts fear that the dispute and Poland’s behavior could open loopholes for other bloc countries to question and threaten the EU’s fundamentals with impunity.
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