The European Commission has filed a complaint against Poland over the legitimacy of its constitutional tribunal, which undermines the primacy of EU law, the Commission said on Wednesday, according to Euractiv.
The complaint concerns the Tribunal’s rulings from 14 July and 7 October 2021, in which it found the EU Treaties failed to comply with the Polish constitution and questioned the primacy of EU law over national law, the announcement explained.
The rulings “breach the general principles of autonomy, primacy, effectiveness, uniform application of Union law and the binding effect of rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union,” the Commission’s announcement writes.
More specifically, the Tribunal’s decisions violate Article 19, paragraph 1 of the Treaty on European Union, which guarantees citizens the right to effective court protection, the EU executive added.
The Commission has already bought another case against the Constitutional Tribunal, where its impartiality is being questioned. The Tribunal’s head, Julia Przyłębska, is said to be a good friend of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński.
After it came to power in 2015, PiS started a series of judicial reforms, which prompted the Commission to become seriously concerned over the state of the rule of law in Poland, especially the Polish citizens’ right to a fair trial.
As the Commission stressed, Poland’s top court “no longer meets the requirements of an independent and impartial tribunal” due to the irregularities in the 2015 appointment of three of its judges and Przyłębska’s appointment in 2016.