The story of the Polish Coup where Prime Minister Donald Tusk is currently eviscerating Poland’s upper courts of those who are less than favourable to the European Union is being appallingly badly handled by the legacy media in the UK. To give one example, such a major international story regarding an allied nation and one that is facing potential Russian aggression in the future and which has been occupied by Russia in the past, is not featured at all on Sky News’s front page this morning. It’s a massive story that is not being properly covered and people are having to reach for bloggers and social media to find out what is happening in Poland.

Therefore this article is not one where I can opine on the situation in Poland apart from noting that this looks very much like the European Union taking revenge on a recalcitrant Poland for treating national law and not EU law as having primacy, but one where I point people in the direction of those who appear informed and have something to say.

Dr Richard North of Turbulent Times has done several articles digging deep into the current crisis in Poland.

In one piece entitled ‘Europe an existential battle’ he quotes from an academic working for the Hoover Institution and published in the Wall Street Journal and said:

“Despite the increasing clamour, you have to reach over the Atlantic, to the Wall Street Journal to get a sanguine view of the crisis in Poland.

This comes in a commentary piece written by Jakub Grygiel, professor at the Catholic University of America and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, who writes under the title “Poland’s Constitutional Crisis Is Also Europe’s”, making a reference to the historical disputes between altar and throne, suggesting a similarity in the current conflict between EU rules and governments of nations.

Grygiel is one of the few commentators of late who has put his finger on the root cause of Tusk’s determination to bring the constitutional court to heel – the ruling by the ECJ on 18 December last year (Case C-448/23) that the court had “disregarded several fundamental principles of EU law, including its primacy”.

The judgement goes on to rule that Poland “had failed to fulfil its obligations because the Polish Constitutional Court had infringed the principle of effective judicial protection and disregarded the primacy, autonomy, effectiveness and uniform application of EU law, as well as the binding effect of the (European) Court’s decisions”. “

Dr North went on to say that the response of EU officials to the organisational trauma of Brexit is to double down on many of the policies that the people’s of various European Union nations clearly do not want such as more ‘green’ energy that is expensive and unreliable or yet more disruptive, costly and often dangerous forms of migration.

In another earlier piece on the Polish Crisis, Dr North penned a particularly gloomy prediction for the future of Poland if the Tusk faction has its way and purges the Polish Constitutional Court.

Dr North said:

If she is able to carry the day, her general assembly will also rule on a motion to revoke the immunity of the constitutional tribunal’s presidents. Once their immunity is lifted, arrests will follow.

In the days and weeks that ensue, this “new Constitutional Tribunal”, he predicts, will begin unlawfully to overturn rulings – specifically those in which the judges now being contested by the current authorities participated – and issue new judgments.

These will include rulings that limited the arbitrary actions of ministers in the Tusk government; and, as is clearly mandated by the constitution of the Republic of Poland, rulings affirming the primacy of the Polish Constitution over international law – specifically the primacy of EU law.

Ultimately, he says, the constitutional tribunal could unlawfully rule that the president of the Republic of Poland is unfit to hold office – replacing him with the Marshal of the Sejm (a leader from the ruling coalition) – and decree the delegalisation of opposition parties.

Images, he gloomily predicts, will circulate globally: usurpers in judicial robes sitting in the courtroom, flanked by the national flag and emblem, while the legitimate officeholders are led away in handcuffs. It will be self-evident who is lawful and who is a criminal. “

Dr North also said that much depends on what the Polish people do here. He believes that if the Poles opposed to what looks like a legal coup in Poland stay on the streets then the Tusk government will come under pressure but if they just go home and show indifference then Tusk will win. I cannot make predictions here but what I will say is that things do look grim for the Poles who want to have a secure and prosperous homeland.

The barrister Stephen Barratt has also weighed into this subject with an excellent explanatory video that went up on his You Tube channel which is worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7NC7-2GvcU

Links

Dr North’s piece entitled Europe an Existential Battle

https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/eu-affairs/europe-an-existential-battle/

Dr North’s earlier piece on the Polish crisis

https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/eu-affairs/europe-confusion-and-indifference/