by IdiotSavant
Wed Dec 18th, 2019 at 01:58:04 AM EST
Poland's Supreme Court has warned that proposed judicial reforms are inconsistent with EU treaties and may lead to Poland being forced out of the EU:
Poland could have to leave the EU over its judicial reform proposals, the country's Supreme Court has warned.
The proposals would allow judges to be dismissed if they questioned the government's judicial reforms.
Judges say the proposals threaten the primacy of EU law and could be an attempt to gag the judiciary.
[...]
The Supreme Court said the party was undermining the principle of the primacy of EU law over national law. It said in a statement: "Contradictions between Polish and EU law.... will in all likelihood lead to an intervention by EU institutions regarding an infringement of EU treaties, and in the longer run [will lead to] the need to leave the European Union."
It also said the proposed bill was "evidently" designed to allow President Andrzej Duda to pick a new head of the court before a presidential election which is expected in May.
The court's chief justice, Professor Malgorzata Gersdorf, likened the governing party's proposals to the days of martial law in 1981 in communist Poland.
This is part of a wider campaign by the authoritarian Law and Justice party against anything which threatens their power, similar to that waged by Orban in Hungary. The question is whether the EU actually has the spine to hold its members to account, and suspend them if they start violating the fundamental obligations of membership.
