The case Poland it flares up at the European Council and the first official threats arrive. “If you will not give us the 36 billion of funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan - says the Polish Deputy Minister for Regional Development, Waldemar Buda - we we will block the discussion on climate”, one of the pillars on which the mandate of the Commission chaired by Ursula von der Leyen rests.
Meanwhile, alignments are already forming in Europe: the Hungarian premier, Viktor Orban, is in favor of Poland, while the Dutch head of government, Mark Rutte, leads the front of the intransigents.
The German chancellor is once again trying to mediate, Angela Merkelat his last European Council after 16 years at the helm of Germany. The risk is that, after Brexit, another fracture will arise in the Union. The situation is so serious as to push Merkel to take charge of identify a compromise that avoids the “Polexit”, a prospect moreover unwelcome to the vast majority of Polish citizens (contrary to what happened in Great Britain).
The outgoing chancellor is convinced that the agreement is the most convenient way for everyone: the tug of war would only lead to a long litany of appeals to the Court of Justice, capable of putting the Union in difficulty.
The goal then is to find a tipping point during the Conference on Europe, called to develop ideas for reforming the Union. Here, Poland should withdraw the ruling of its own Constitutional Court which – in contrast to the European treaties – has enshrined the prevalence of national law over Community law.
Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki (who controls his country's Constitutional Court, appointing its members) claims that he will not give in to blackmail, but seems open to negotiation: "Poland, as established by the treaties - he explains -, recognizes the supremacy of European law on national legislation in all those sectors in which competences have been transferred to the EU”.
The problem is that, if an agreement were to be reached which envisaged ignoring the ruling of the Polish Constitutional Court, Europe would recognize implicitly than the highest judicial body of a Member State has no power, why it is not independent of the executive power who controls it. In this case, the authoritarian nature of the Polish regime would become impossible to ignore e the incompatibility with EU rules it would be final.
In the background therefore remains the possibility for Europe to activate the article 7, which allows you to suspend a country's membership of the Union by excluding it from participating in all meetings. It is Rutte's preferred hypothesis, while French President Emmanuel Macron and the number one of the European Council, Charles Michel, are urging Warsaw to start dialogue.
Meanwhile, today many demonstrations are planned in Poland for the first anniversary of the anti-abortion law.
