Minister Ziobro to ask Constitutional Tribunal to declare EU rule of mechanism incompatible with constitution

Poland's Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro announced on Thursday he would ask the country's Constitutional Tribunal to declare the the EU rule of law conditionality mechanism is not compatible with the Polish constitution.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro reminded at Thursday's press conference that his ministry, as well as his party United Poland, were both against said EU mechanism, but prime minister Morawiecki agreed to its adoption.

Ziobro also said that after "a thorough legal analysis it's absolutely certain that the conditionality mechanism is a solution glaringly incompatible with the Polish constitution". "That's why I have decided to file a motion to Polish Constitutional Tribunal," he stressed.

Poland's justice minister called the mechanism a "blackmail and economic violence", which the EU Commission uses to "coerce changes in any area under the guise of the rule of law". "The rule of law can mean everything and nothing. It can be defined freely. Now, we hear definition stating that the rule of law is everything which relates to the European Union, and so the EU has competence everywhere, and therefore Poland and other EU countries have to toe the EU line," he said.

"Therefore, it's actually all about power and sovereignty. This is what the dispute is really about, not about rule of law," he argued.