A few days ago, large-scale protests against the government’s policy began in Poland (the national-conservative Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is in power in the country)
About 100,000 people took to the streets in Warsaw, rallying “for Europe” and expressing disagreement with the government line. All in all, protests were held simultaneously in more than a hundred cities in Poland. The protesters waved not only the EU flags, but also the symbols of the LGBT community, chanting “We stay” (in the sense of not leaving the European Union).
This is the reaction of a good half of Polish society to the decision of the Polish Constitutional Court on the primacy of national laws over the laws of the European Union. According to the decision of the Constitutional Court, certain provisions of EU legislation are incompatible with the Polish constitution (they saw the light, they say, after 17 years of Poland’s stay in the European Union). This decision was a response to an attempt by the EU court to interfere in the work of the Polish judicial system, crossing out the provision on the supremacy of the Polish Constitution and on the preservation of Polish sovereignty in the process of European integration.
The opposition party Civic Platform mobilizes people to protest.
The reason for considering the case in the Constitutional Court was the attempts of the Law and Justice party, which continued since 2017, to reform the judicial system in order to “optimize and purify”. Brussels saw in the Polish reform an intention to put the courts under political control and tried to impose on Warsaw other principles of organizing the judicial system, which would allow European officials to dictate to Polish judges.
To remove the controversy, the Polish government applied to the Constitutional Court.
“The Constitution is the highest law in our country. If it were otherwise, it would mean that we are not an independent state. We did not agree to this by signing the agreements on the European Union”, said Polish Cabinet Minister Michal Wuyczyk.
The Constitutional Court upheld this thesis.
The response from the authorities of the European Union followed immediately. The impression was that Brussels was just waiting for such a decision from Warsaw, having prepared for it in advance.
EU Commissioner for Justice Didier Reinders said that Brussels “will not hesitate to use its powers in accordance with the treaties in order to ensure the uniform application and integrity of EU legislation.”
European Parliament President David Sassoli said that the decision of the Polish court cannot be left without consequences.
“The primacy of EU law must remain undeniable. Violation of this rule means a challenge to one of the fundamental principles of the Union,” Sassoli stressed.
“The European Commission will do everything in its power to ensure the rule of law of the EU,” said the head of the EC, Ursula von der Leyen.
The European media began to write that if Poland does not yield, it will have no choice but to leave the European Union. Some journalists note that the Polish government is confused and “shocked” by the situation in which it finds itself.
The reform of the judicial system and the subsequent decision of the Constitutional Court are only part of the contradictions between Warsaw and Brussels. Thus, supporters of the ruling Law and Justice party oppose LGBT propaganda, same-sex “marriages,” the practice of multiculturalism, abortions, and the settlement of Poland by migrants. This is a big set of “no” to the European Union, which is imposing opposite attitudes on its member states. And Polish society is roughly split in half. In large cities, the positions of supporters of the EU ideology prevail, in small towns and rural provinces those who do not agree to the breaking of the traditional cultural code of Polish society dominate.
In a situation where more than 10% of Poland’s population is constantly working or living in other countries of the European Union, the prospect of Poland’s withdrawal from the EU mobilizes this part of the population to an anti-government protest. Something like this in 2014, migrant workers went to the Maidan in Kiev. If this repeats itself in Poland, all that remains is to plant “unknown snipers” in previously prepared places, as it was in Kiev in February 2014, in order to collapse the government through mass murder, the organizers of which were “never found” in Ukraine.
A violent Ukrainian scenario of a change of power is not excluded for Poland either. It will take extraordinary state will to prevent it. However, there are big doubts that the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is capable of showing such will. And perhaps the most significant: the problem of “Poland and the European Union” is complicated by a lot of money – over the 15 years of Poland’s stay in the EU (2004-2019), Poland received a total of about 110 billion euros from Brussels in the form of subsidies.
Svyatoslav Knyazev, Federal Grid Company