PM requests ruling on supremacy of Polish constitution over EU law

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has requested that the country’s Constitutional Tribunal issue a ruling confirming the supremacy of Polish over European law. It comes after the government accused the European Court of Justice of “exceeding its competences”.

Government spokesman Piotr Müller announced that on Monday Morawiecki formally filed a petition to the tribunal. The court, which is Poland’s highest constitutional authority, was controversially overhauled in 2016 by the government, with a close associate of the ruling party’s chairman installed as its chief justice.

The government flagged its intention to submit such a request at the start of March, after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that regulations on appointing judges to the Polish Supreme Court could violate EU law.

Justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro – who has led a judicial overhaul that has repeatedly brought Poland into conflict with Brussels – declared that he “does not recognise” the CJEU’s ruling. Any Polish politician who does so would be “recognising that Poland has ceased to be a sovereign state”, he warned.

Two of Ziobro’s deputy ministers, Sebastian Kaleta and Michał Woś, claimed that the CJEU was seeking to “federalise the EU”. This is “a violation of the treaties and an attempt to annihilate the sovereignty of the member states”, added Kaleta.

Morawiecki then announced that he would ask “the Constitutional Tribunal for a comprehensive settlement of the issue of conflict between European law norms and the Polish constitution”.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s spokeswoman, Anita Czerwińska, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) at the time that parts of the CJEU ruling “question the supremacy of the [Polish] constitution over all [other] sources of law in the Republic of Poland, including the EU treaties”.