EU faces crisis after Polish high court ruling challenged bloc's law supremacy

The Polish Constitutional Tribunal ruled on Thursday that some parts of EU treaties are incompatible with the Polish constitution, challenging a pillar of the European Union and sharply escalating discord between Brussels and Warsaw.

Politicians across Europe voiced dismay at the court's move to undermine the legal pillar on which the EU stands, with one minister warning the eastern European country that it was "playing with fire".

The European Commission will do all in its power to ensure the primacy of EU law, its president Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday, adding that the ruling by Poland's highest court had left her "deeply concerned".

"EU law has primacy over national law, including constitutional provisions," von der Leyen said in a statement. "This is what all EU member states have signed up to as members of the European Union. We will use all the powers that we have under the treaties to ensure this."

The EU executive's chief ordered a thorough and swift analysis of the ruling, on the basis of which the Commission would decide its next steps. The European Union, she said, was a community of values and laws on which 450 million Europeans, including Poles, relied. "Our utmost priority is to ensure that the rights of Polish citizens are protected and that Polish citizens enjoy the benefits granted by membership of the European Union, just like all citizens of our union," she said. EU citizens and businesses needed legal certainty that EU rules, including rulings of the European Court of Justice, were fully applied in Poland, she said. "Our treaties are very clear. All rulings by the European Court of Justice are binding on all member states' authorities, including national courts," she said.

In response to the ruling, the European Commission, which is the guardian of EU laws, could launch an "infringement procedure" against Poland in the CJEU to force it to accept the supremacy of EU law. That process, which could take weeks or months, could lead to Warsaw being fined.

The Commission launched such legal steps against Germany when the German constitutional court questioned the legality of the EU recovery fund project. The Polish case is different, though, because it questions the very basis of EU construction.

"We are waiting now for new decisions of the Court of Justice about the situation in Poland, also possible daily financial sanctions," EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told reporters in Brussels on Friday. 

"We have to state clearly that this government in Poland is playing with fire," Luxembourg's minister for foreign affairs, Jean Asselborn, said on arrival for a meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg. "The primacy of European law is essential for the integration of Europe and living together in Europe. If this principle is broken, Europe as we know it, as it has been built with the Rome treaties, will cease to exist." French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said the Polish Constitutional Tribunal's ruling was an attack on the EU that could lead to economic sanctions against Warsaw. "It is most serious ... There is the de facto risk of an exit from the European Union," Beaune told BFM TV, adding that he did not want Poland to leave the bloc.

Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party government says it has no plans for a "Polexit" and - unlike Britain before its Brexit referendum in 2016 - popular support for membership of the EU is high in Poland.

"We want a community of respect and not a grouping of those who are equal and more equal. This is our community, our Union," Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Facebook, referring to the EU.

"This is the kind of Union we want and that's the kind of Union we will create," he added.

European Union law must have primacy over national law, in Poland as well as elsewhere, Germany's European affairs minister Michael Roth said on Friday. "Otherwise our community of values, built on common laws, cannot work," he said on Twitter, adding that attacks on the EU's common laws had reached a new intensity. A spokesman for the German government said earlier that it was up to the European Commission to assess the rule of law in Poland and that the Commission had the full confidence of Germany.

"If a country decides to be part of the EU it must fully implement the common rules," Maas told the Funke group of newspapers in remarks published on Friday, adding that Germany fully supports the European Commission in its efforts to ensure EU law is implemented in all 27 member states.