The head of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, Julia Przyłębska, says the European Commission is “encroaching on the sovereignty of Polish state organs” after it asked the Polish government to withdraw a case put to the tribunal regarding the supremacy of Polish over European law.
Meanwhile, the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, has condemned the commission for having an “obnoxious, insolent and colonialist attitude” towards Poland with regard to the case.
The remarks follow years of clashes between Warsaw and Brussels over the rule of law, including challenges to legitimacy of the current Constitutional Tribunal and Przyłębska’s leadership of it.
In March, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he would seek a “comprehensive settlement of the issue of conflict between European law norms and the Polish constitution” by asking the Constitutional Tribunal to rule on the issue.
Last week, the EU’s justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, asked Warsaw to withdraw the case. Reynders said that the motion “appears to contest fundamental principles of EU law” as well as “the authority of the Court of Justice when interpreting the EU Treaties”, reports POLITICO Europe.
This “goes against the duty of loyal cooperation in that it actively seeks a declaration of the Constitutional Tribunal to deny the authority of the interpretation of the key principles of EU law,” added his letter.
The correspondence, which was addressed to Poland’s justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, and minister for EU affairs, Konrad Szymański, reportedly gave the Polish government a month to respond.
On Thursday, Ziobro reacted angrily, saying it takes “insolence” to instruct the country on “the operation of an independent Polish constitutional court”.
The justice minister suggested that the “obnoxious, colonialist attitude toward Poland” EU had taken foreign interference in Polish domestic affairs to a level beyond even that of the communist era.
“I can’t recall a case in which some party secretary in Moscow wrote to Wojciech Jaruzelski [a communist-era leader] or one of his predecessors, demanding that he withdrew a motion from the court. Even in those times they kept up appearances,” he added, in remarks quoted by Polsat.
Yesterday, Przyłębska, the constitutional court’s chief justice and a close associate of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s chairman, said that the letter interfered with the constitutional right of the prime minister “to ask the Constitutional Tribunal about the constitutionality of certain regulations”.
She told Polish Radio that “the request not to submit this application, and thus not to exercise one’s constitutional right, may be treated in terms of an attempt to interfere with the sovereignty and independence of state organs”
Przyłębska concluded that the letter constituted “a breach of certain applicable rules in the democratic system of functioning of states” that may have been caused by an “ignorance of Polish law by EU officials”. She said a date would then be set for the proceedings when judges were “ready to adjudicate”.
In a separate case, her court had also been due tomorrow to review the conformity with the Polish constitution of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s interim measures suspending part of Poland’s judicial policies. However, it emerged today that the case had disappeared from the tribunal’s schedule for tomorrow without explanation.
The chief justice’s position is itself disputed, after she was engineered into it in 2016, in apparent breach of regulations, as part of the PiS-led government’s contested overhaul of the judiciary.
Last year, the head of the German constitutional court called Przyłębska a “puppet”. The European Court of Human Rights last month ruled that her court is not a “tribunal established by law”.
In response to international criticism, Warsaw argues that is being unfairly targeted for introducing policies that are already in place in other countries. It also accuses the EU of overstepping its remit by interfering in a member state’s internal affairs and opposing a democratically elected government.
Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution backing proceedings against the European Commission for taking too lenient a line towards Poland and Hungary over rule-of-law breaches, by failing to trigger financial sanctions. In response, Ziobro labelled the parliament “openly anti-democratic and unlawful”
Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Gazeta
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
