EU takes aim at Poland amid fears for bloc's legal order

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Wednesday launched legal action against Poland over recent decisions by one of the country’s top courts which have raised troubling questions about the 27-nation bloc’s legal order.

In October, Poland’s constitutional court ruled that Polish laws have supremacy over those of the EU in areas where they conflict. When countries join the EU, as Poland did in 2004, they must bring their laws into line with the bloc’s regulations. The European Court of Justice is the supreme arbiter of those rules.

In launching its legal action, the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, said that it sees two constitutional tribunal decisions this year as “expressly challenging the primacy of EU law.” The commission also raised doubts about the court’s legitimacy.

Announcing the move, Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said the rulings “are in breach of the general principles of autonomy, primacy, effectiveness and uniform application of Union law and the binding effect of rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union.”

Gentiloni said the commission, which proposes EU laws and supervises the way they are applied, considers that the Polish court “no longer meets the requirements of an independent and impartial tribunal established by law as required by the (EU) treaty.”

“The European Union is a community of values and of law and the rights of Europeans under the treaties must be protected, no matter where they live in the union,” he told reporters.

The legal action is just the latest in a series of confrontations between Brussels and the right-wing government in Warsaw over the state of the country’s justice system, rule of law standards and media freedoms.

Earlier this year, the commission sought fines to force Warsaw to improve the...