Polish sovereignty

If Brussels believed that its deliberately prolonged battle with the UK over Brexit would strengthen its authority in the remaining member states, it is having a rude awakening thanks to a bitter row with the Polish government.

Poland is alleged to have abused the EU’S so-called “democratic values”, after a constitutional court ruled that Polish law superseded EU law. Earlier this week, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, called this a “direct challenge to the unity of the European legal order” and threatened punitive measures. A failure to act, it was warned, could see the EU collapse.

The assumption in Brussels, and among some of the more aggressive national leaders, appears to be that since Poland is the recipient of billions of euros in EU subsidies, and Poles are broadly supportive of EU membership, they can afford to antagonise the Polish government and perhaps even go so far as to strip the country of some of the benefits of membership. But not all within Europe are so sure, including the outgoing German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Talk of Polexit may be premature. The Polish prime minister said earlier this week that his country remained a “loyal member” of the EU, but that he was anxious about the bloc’s transformation into an entity that was no longer an alliance of equal, sovereign states.

However, there is clearly a danger of Brussels miscalculating. If Brexit taught the EU anything, it ought to have been that national sovereignty is not an abstract concept that is irrelevant in the modern world, but crucial to the proper functioning of democratic politics.