A Well-Rehearsed Play: Commission v Poland (Contrôle Ultra Vires de la Jurisprudence de la Cour de Justice par une Cour Constitutionnelle)

Commission v Poland brought to the attention of the Court of Justice fundamental questions of EU constitutional law, including the independence of a national constitutional court and constitutional judgments that strongly challenged the primacy of EU law. The case however proved to be less controversial than expected, in part because the Polish government withdrew its defence before the Court and accepted the Commission’s complaints, and in part because the Court of Justice had developed significant lines of case law on which it could rely in its ruling. This case note focuses on how the Court enforced judicial independence standards and the principle of primacy, as well as on how it dealt with the Polish constitutional identity claims. It argues that the judgment is an important signal of the consolidation of the EU constitutional foundations in the last decade.