Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, a court (TK), has ruled some European Union regulations on energy policy to be incompatible with the Polish Constitution on the basis of Poland’s sovereign right to choose its own sources of power.
The full reasoning behind the decision was published on the TK’s official website on June 10.
The move came in response to a petition by MPs from the opposition Conservatives (PiS) to rule on whether the EU’s emissions trading system was consistent with the Polish Constitution and Poland’s accession treaty with the EU.
The TK deemed that the limits of the EU’s powers were defined by the “principle of conferral”. That meant bodies such as the European Commission and others could only act “within the competences granted to them by member states in the treaties, for the achievement of specific objectives”.
According to the ruling, the principle of conferral was violated by the way the competences were exercised and that they transgressed the Polish Constitution.
The TK also stated that if international organisations, such as the EU, adopted legislation that overstepped the legal basis of their own powers, this also constituted a violation of the constitutional framework, which granted such powers.
The ruling stressed that “EU-friendly interpretation of Polish law” cannot lead to Poland losing control over the scope of the powers it has delegated.
According to PiS MP Michał Wójcik, the court’s decision meant the EU’s “Green Deal is trash!”
“That’s the essence of today’s ruling by the Constitutional court. A great day for Poles.”
Neither the EU’s institutions nor the Polish Government were likely to agree, though.
The centre-left administration led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk did not regard the TK as a legitimate court because of a dispute about the election of three out of the 15 justices to the court.
TK justices in Poland were elected by parliament and back in 2015 there was a procedural wrangle in the assembly over the validity of the election of three of the court’s members. That was challenged by the TK as well as the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The Tusk government earlier in 2024 passed a resolution declaring the TK to be illegitimate and refusing to publish any of its rulings.
The EC has consistently challenged rulings by the TK, which asserted the sovereignty of the Polish Constitution over European legislation.
The German constitutional court has in the past also ruled favourably on the primacy of the German Constitution over European law.
