EU slams Poland’s laws; aid unlikely

BRUSSELS — Polish arguments that fundamental judicial changes the country has made would not undermine the European Union on Friday failed to convince key bloc leaders, who said that the withholding of billions in EU recovery funds would likely continue unless Warsaw falls back into line.

At the end of a two-day EU summit dominated by the standoff over core values such as judicial independence and the primacy of EU law in member states, a large majority of leaders insisted that preparations for sanctions against Poland needed to continue apace.

“No European country can call itself European if it’s judges are not independent,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.

And when Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki sowed the seeds of doubt that EU law should take a back seat to national rules, many leaders insisted that the EU’s executive arm had not choice but to move against Poland over the rule of law dispute.

“There are no alternatives. The laws are clear,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said. “The treaty, the basis of the union, was put into question. It’s clear the commission can not go forward.”

EU nations have warned for years over what they see as a backsliding of democratic principles in Poland when it comes to an independent judiciary and free media. They said Morawiecki’s nationalist government stacked the constitutional court with handpicked judges and then had the same court challenge the supremacy of EU law.

To counter this, Morawiecki contends that the EU institutions are so power-hungry that they treat the 27 member nations as vassals, grabbing power without a legal base and imposing its values against the wishes of sovereign peoples.

And by threatening sanctions, he said the EU was using plain “blackmail.”

The EU is holding back $42 billion in resilience funds for Poland aimed at helping the nation bounce back from the pandemic. It hasn’t released the funds because Poland needs to meet certain conditions that many leaders say necessitate legal changes Morawiecki refuses to make.

The EU’s executive arm can start infringement procedures, or activate a mechanism allowing the suspension of other EU payments to a member country breaching the principles of the rule of law.

Such a confrontation though could throw the bloc into another existential crisis, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to avoid.

Poland has been perceived as trying to undermine the EU with anti-Brussels rhetoric. It fears that the EU is fraying at the edges and that another exit, like the one from the United Kingdom, might loom.

At a news briefing in Brussels after the summit, Morawiecki argued that Poland has no problem with the rule of law and that there needs to be limits to EU power, saying it’s not a “super state.”