“The Polish government wants to have its cake, and eat it too,” said Anna Wojcik, a researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who specializes in the rule of law.
“They want to stay in the European Union, because this is what 90 percent of Poles support, but at the same time they want to free themselves from the European rulings concerning the judiciary.” she said.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the bloc, has made clear it will not accept that, while avoiding any statements that would cast in doubt Poland’s future membership in a bloc that is still recovering from the shock of Britain’s 2016 vote to leave.
The disputed disciplinary system for judges, said Ms. Wojcik, “touches on the fundamental issue of the right to effective judicial protection” and threatens “the European legal order.”
Brussels has hit back at Poland’s previous refusal to dismantle the disciplinary system by asking the European court to impose a penalty of up to $1.2 million per day on Poland. In a further sign of rising tension, the commission last month acknowledged that it was withholding $42 billion in payments to Poland from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund because of the country’s challenges to the supremacy of E.U. law.
Donald Tusk, a former prime minister who returned to Warsaw this year to rally opposition to Law and Justice after serving in Brussels as president of the European Council, warned in July that efforts by his home country and Hungary to challenge the bloc’s fundamental rules risked pushing Europe onto a path of disintegration. But he said there would be no imminent collapse and the process would take many years.
Asked by a judge Thursday about the possibility that Poland might have to eventually leave the bloc, the government’s representative in court said that was not an issue because the case was focused on narrow legal questions, not about Poland’s membership.
Andrew Higgins reported from Warsaw, and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels. Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.