Poland's Constitutional Crisis Is Also Europe's

“Recent events in Poland are troubling, not only for the stability of that front-line country but for the rest of Europe.

 

The liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent riot police to occupy the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw, suspended its top two judges, and installed his own choice as the court's president. He claims to be restoring the rule of law. The operation was organized in secret and launched on Friday night, at the start of the All Saints' Day weekend, when many Poles travel to visit family graves, and while President Karol Nawrocki, of the opposing conservative camp, was heading to Senegal on an official visit. The timing, the images and the means Mr. Tusk chose gave the impression of a coup d'etat.

 

President Nawrocki flew back to Warsaw and entered the court building himself early Saturday. He too claims to be defending the rule of law, protecting it from attempts by the left-of-center camp to control it.

 

The confrontation's roots go back to 2015, when Mr. Tusk's party, the Civic Platform, about to lose parliamentary elections, tried to appoint five judges to the court, even though two of the seats weren't yet vacant and were meant to be filled by the incoming parliament.

 

From then on, the tribunal was a target of jousting between the two political camps. This March the Sejm, the lower house of Poland's Parliament, elected six new judges aligned with Mr. Tusk's party. Mr. Nawrocki refused to swear in four of them, claiming that the prime minister was trying to control the judiciary.

 

Accusations from both sides are flying, and the crisis could escalate, causing domestic unrest and European instability.

 

Mr. Tusk has overreached, and there is a unified opposition against him and his party.

 

 But the European Commission, unsurprisingly, sided with Mr. Tusk, saying that the Constitutional Tribunal must "function in accordance with the Polish constitution and in respect of the relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union."

 

The drama in Warsaw is symptomatic of a much larger conflict brewing across Europe: a clash between two concepts of legitimate authority. Is a country's constitution national, to be interpreted by domestic authorities, or is it subordinate to EU rules, to be interpreted by higher European institutions?

 

Throughout history Europe has seen its share of large and often bloody conflicts between the throne and the altar. It now faces something akin to the 11th-century Investiture Controversy, not over who has the authority to appoint bishops (the emperor or the pope) but over who has the authority to judge laws and constitutions in member states.

 

In Poland this contest took a risky turn, with a clash between the country's two top political leaders and riot police on one side. The same contest is shaping political life elsewhere. France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Romania all are or have been affected by their own version of this modern Investiture Controversy.

 

Who is higher, the EU or national democratic procedures?

 

Two factors are fueling this contest. First, the EU, like all large multilateral institutions, functions relatively smoothly in a low-threat environment. But when a menace appears on its borders, states see the urgency of deciding quickly on the best security approach, without the inevitable burden of the multilateral compromise. Europe's frontier is regularly breached, by the odd Ukrainian drone or assassination, or by mass migration. Beyond convening more discussion councils, the EU has done little to improve the security of its members.

 

Second, faced with electoral opposition in various member states and still reeling from Brexit, EU elites have pushed hard for top-down integration. The EU wants all its members to accept a migration pact with its mandatory "solidarity" mechanism requiring them to take in relocated migrants, even though similar relocation plans have brought social instability to members that complied with them. The European Commission seeks to centralize energy policies to advance the "green" transition, most recently through higher taxes on natural gas than on electricity, even though such measures only deepen Europe's energy-industrial crisis.

 

The European Court of Justice last year ordered Poland to accept same-sex marriages even though Polish law doesn't recognize such unions.

 

The future bodes ill for Europe because the EU claim of superiority is tearing apart the Continent.

 

The 11th-century Investiture Controversy left behind a weakened Holy Roman Empire, a fragmented Italy and centuries of European division, at a moment when unity was desperately needed against the Saracens and Turks. The absence of a new political settlement, not only in Poland but in Europe writ large, will likely produce an analogous outcome: a weakened European Continent facing rapacious powers to the east and formidable demographic pressure from the south.

 

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Mr. Grygiel is a professor at the Catholic University of America and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.” [1]

 

1. Poland's Constitutional Crisis Is Also Europe's. Grygiel, Jakub.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 03 Nov 2026: A15.