The leaders of the EU had hoped to be able to negotiate away the Polish attacks on the foundations of the Union – and failed.
Brussels. The judgment of the Polish constitutional tribunal on Thursday, according to which the EU treaties are subordinate to the Polish constitution, is the low point of the six years of efforts by the European Commission to persuade the national authoritarian government in Warsaw to abolish it through a mixture of persuasion and often delayed infringement proceedings to dissuade the rule of law. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, announced on Friday that she was “deeply concerned” about the judgment and had “instructed the Commission’s services to analyze it thoroughly and quickly”. “On this basis we will decide on the next steps.”
But the Commission is running out of leverage. A Polexit, i.e. Poland’s exit from the EU, is still a fiction. No Member State can be kicked out. But the sharpest weapon in the Commission’s arsenal, the infringement procedure, is ineffective against Poland. Because the government has already repeatedly declared in the past few months that it does not feel bound by the judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). For almost three weeks, for example, Poland has had to pay a daily fine of 500,000 euros because – ignoring an injunction by the Court of Justice – it will not close the lignite power station in Turów in southwest Poland. But in Tuŕow the diggers continue to roar and the chimneys smoke.