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The latest confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels is more than a judicial disagreement: it marks a key moment in the fight between the rule of law and autocracy that threatens to very essence of the European project.

Last week, Polands constitutional tribunal ruled that decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding Polish courts violate the Polish constitution. Two days later, the CJEU declared that a chamber of the Polish Supreme Court does not fulfill EU criteria of an independent court and has to cease operations. The Polish authorities, in turn, said that they are not bound to follow the ruling and simply ignored it.

Questioning the supremacy of the EU law and verdicts of the blocs highest judicial body is not a minor offence. The EU is in its very essence a system of rules which requires respect and needs an ultimate arbiter when their application is disputed.

However, the EU institutions are not omnipotent. The boundary between what they are allowed to do and what is reserved for the authorities of the member states is often a matter of controversy. National tribunals and governments tend to complain about the power grab by the European institutions and even question decisions taken by the CJEU.

The current conflict between Warsaw and Brussels/Luxembourg is of a different magnitude, and framing it as a defense of Polish sovereignty against a EU overreach is nonsense.

The subjugation of the judiciary is a key part of the anti-democratic project of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS). And the intention of the Polish authorities is nothing less than to deny the EU the power to ensure that the courts in its member states remain independent and are not subject to political pressure.

Article 19 of the EU treaty guarantees "effective legal protection" for all EU citizens and companies. The Polish government says that this fundamental provision violates the Polish constitution because it grants the CJEU competence to assess if the national courts including those in Poland meet standards of judicial independence, standards which are internationally recognised and consolidated.

Should the EU the Commission, CJEU and the member states tolerate this defiance, it would pave the way for the destruction of the union. It would give member states a free hand to decide not just the structure of their judicial systems which is the sovereign right of all countries but also the principles they are based on. The EU is a union based upon a common market and common citizenship, but an independent judiciary is also a common good. Allowing member states to subvert it would be suicidal.

In Poland, judges have been harassed for standing up for the separation of power, for submitting questions to the CJEU and for implementing its rulings. The disciplinary system for judges is fully controlled by the minister of justice who nominates both prosecutors and judges and can personally go after each and every judge in the country.

This system, unsurprisingly condemned last week by the CJEU as violating EU principles, is used to intimidate judges, persecute those who criticise the demolition of the rule of law and ultimately to silence any form of resistance to these practices. And it is in the defense of this system as a pillar of the ongoing autocratic transformation that the Polish government and its subservient constitutional tribunal risk the future of the country and that of the EU.

All this is reflected in a report published this week by the European Commission in the framework of its yearly monitoring of the rule of law. In spite of an unemotional language, the report reads like a desperate cry or even an indictment.

"There are risks as regards the effectiveness of the fight against high-level corruption, including a risk of undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes," the paper notes about Poland, proving it wasn't the lack of knowledge but political resolve that failed to prevent the current showdown. Now the stakes for both the EU and Poland could not be higher.

The Commission has already given Warsaw until 16 August to comply with the CJEU verdict. Otherwise, Brussels will request the court to impose daily financial penalties.

But the Commission must go further than issuing an ultimatum: it needs to clearly say that, as long the constitutional barriers for the application of the EU law are in place in Poland, payments from the Recovery Fund will be withheld. Moreover, the executive should trigger the newly established conditionality mechanism which is supposed to protect the EU financial interests against the risks related to deficiencies of the rule of law. Obviously, all of this will not work without the public backing from the member states.

In short, the EU needs to let the money its most powerful argument speak, since all more diplomatic ways have failed.

The recent escalation in Warsaws conflict with the EU could be the swan song of Kaczynskis waning power. His parliamentary majority is crumbling and the return of Donald Tusk his old political enemy to Poland revives unpleasant memories. For Kaczynski, this is a race against time. By tightening autocratic screws, he wants to secure the power before it slips away. But yet another, after Hungary, autocracy beefed up by huge EU funds would open the way for self-destruction of the European project.

This is the moment of truth when both the EU and Poland need a very powerful political signal that crossing indisputable red lines the binding nature of the rule of law can and will not be tolerated.

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Piotr Buras is the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of the report "Defending the EU against grand corruption. The rule of law mechanism and Poland".

This article is part of The Briefing, Euronews' weekly political newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

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Poland's legal defiance is the EUs moment of truth | View - Euronews

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, first unveiled the Canada-EU partnership at a summit in June. Courtesy of the European Commission.

Canadas Minister of Natural Resources, Seamus ORegan, and the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, released a joint statement on July 19 on the Canada-EU Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials. The statement is a follow-up on the framework for the partnership, which was released on June 15.

At that time, Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, said that the agreement was intended to encourage market diversification from Chinas raw materials supply chain. We as Europeans want to diversify our imports away from producers like China because we want more sustainability, less environmental damage and we want transparency on raw materials. Justin Trudeau, at the time, underscored the potential climate and employment benefits of the partnership, saying that, in order to continue creating good, green jobs for the middle class, we must secure supply chains for critical minerals and metals that are essential for things like electric car batteries, indicating the centrality of materials crucial to the development of green tech to the partnership.

Related: Funding will go to phasing out the use of coal at the Sault Ste. Marie steelmaker

The partnership is designed with the intention of solidifying supply chains for raw materials between Canada and the EU, with the stated goals of creating jobs and combatting climate change.

In Mondays joint statement, the two parties announced some of the key initial deliverables for the project: securing European and Canadian financial support for critical mineral projects in both Canada and the EU; setting up prize-based innovation challenges; and advancing best practices on mapping and classifying critical minerals. A joint event is also planned on Tracing Net-Zero Battery Minerals in order to support research and innovation.

The joint statement also re-emphasized some of the goals of the partnership: Through this strategic partnership, we are joining forces to tackle strategic dependencies, build critical minerals and metals value chains, boost our competitiveness in global markets and develop the clean technologies needed [to accomplish those goals].

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Canada and European Union outline critical minerals partnershipSome of the key initial deliverables of the partnership are intended to diversify and...

The European Commission is working on a bill to regulate foreign subsidies. According to it, any foreign company wishing to sign a sizeable M&A deal in the European Union or export to the European Union on a public procurement basis must report subsidies it received in its home country for three years and obtain an approval from the European Union.

False data submission or non-submission can be subject to a fine equivalent to 1 percent to 10 percent of sales. In addition, the European Union can initiate an investigation on every possibility of subsidy-based competition distortion.

The application of the new regulation has to be limited to countries lacking transparency in terms of subsidy operation, said the American Chamber of Commerce in the European Union, adding, The cost burden and time delay attributable to the data preparation will hinder market innovation in the European Union in the end.

What is important is smooth data exchange using existing bills, not a new bill, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the European Union commented, continuing, This new regulation will lead to a decrease in corporate investment in the European Union.

South Korea is keeping the transparency in accordance with its FTA with the European Union and yet South Korean companies may become innocent victims, the Korea Business Association Europe pointed out, adding, This is because the bill has too much room for arbitrary interpretation and application.

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European Union to Adopt New Subsidy Regulation - BusinessKorea

BRUSSELS Poland and Hungary were criticized sharply Tuesday by the European Commission in a set of reports that said recent actions by the countries threatened judicial independence and undermined the rule of law.

The reports reviewed the state of the rule of law in all 27 European Union member states, and its conclusions about Poland and Hungary were severe, notwithstanding their relatively bland bureaucratic language.

Their impact, however, is likely to be small.

The European Union has no effective tools for quickly disciplining member states, and a new initiative to at least allow the withholding of E.U. coronavirus recovery funds from countries found to be undermining the rule of law will not be put to the test before autumn, if then.

Hungary and Poland get the most attention because they are considered the main offenders when it comes to undermining the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and media pluralism. But numerous other member states, including Austria, Bulgaria, Malta, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, also have serious problems with the same issues.

Hungary and Poland are still seeking commission approval for their recovery spending plans as part of the 800 billion euro about $920 billion pandemic fund. But E.U. officials made clear that the reports released Tuesday were entirely separate from the judgments to be made later about whether to approve or withhold money. Hungary is to get some 7 billion euros, and Poland about 24 billion.

The reports were presented by Vera Jourova, vice president for values and transparency, and Didier Reynders, commissioner for justice. They spoke generally of the effort to establish what Mr. Reynders called a culture of the rule of law.

In a background briefing for journalists, E.U. officials (under the ground rules, they do not allow themselves to be named) were relatively straightforward. About what has happened in Hungary over the last year, one official said: The vast majority of the concerns remain present, and some of them have worsened.

Issues raised in the reports include clientelism, favoritism, nepotism, corruption, pressure on the media and questions about judicial independence.

Hungary is also under renewed attention over its reported use of a sophisticated Israeli-developed spyware called Pegasus to monitor journalists, rights workers, opposition politicians and foreign heads of state.

A consortium of media organizations, including The Washington Post and The Guardian, reported this week that the sophisticated spyware has been used by more than 50 countries. At least five of the smartphones that appeared to be targeted belonged to individuals in Hungary, according to the consortium, and more than 300 Hungarian phone numbers appeared on a list of about 50,000 that included some selected for surveillance using Pegasus, the consortium said.

The European Union has commented carefully on those findings, which emerged after Tuesdays reports were written. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said Monday that if Hungarys use of Pegasus was verified, it is completely unacceptable and against any kind of rules we have in the European Union.

When the freedom of media is concerned, she said, free press is one of the core values of the European Union. It is completely unacceptable if this would be the case.

But once again, the question of any sanctions remains unclear.

There is no real avenue for them against E.U. members that does not rely on a lengthy court process or the unanimous vote of member states which would be impossible, especially since Poland and Hungary have agreed to block any such actions. So-called Article 7 disciplinary proceedings initiated against Poland and Hungary, which in principle could see them denied voting rights, are therefore moot.

Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, on Monday denied the use of Pegasus in surveilling civilians. At a news conference, Judit Varga, the justice minister, said: Hungary is a state governed by the rule of law and, like any decent state, in the 21st century it has the technical means to carry out its national security tasks. It would be a serious problem if we did not have these tools, but they are used in a lawful manner.

Analysts were skeptical about the impact of the rule-of-law reports.

In the short term, this report primarily offers a facade of action, said Laurent Pech, a professor of European law at Middlesex University in London, arguing that the commission should have prioritized prompt and decisive enforcement actions.

The findings, Mr. Pech said, may prove helpful in the long term, but he asked, What is the point of a rule-of-law report if, due to lack of decisive action and enforcement, there is no rule of law left to monitor in some countries?

In Poland, one of the reports says, the situation for justice has generally deteriorated, with politicized reforms creating serious concerns as regards the rule of law, in particular judicial independence.

The European Commission is in a major struggle with both countries about the rule of law and the supremacy of European law over national courts. Poland has challenged the authority of the European Court of Justice, which has ordered the suspension of a disciplinary chamber for judges on the grounds that it is politicized and not independent.

Poland has refused, and the commission on Tuesday again warned that it would initiate further actions against the country. If Poland does not comply with the court orders by Aug. 16, the commission will ask the court to penalize Poland financially, Ms. Jourova said.

E.U. law has primacy over national law, she said. There can be no compromise on this.

The report on Poland also cited intimidation of journalists and a growing lack of media pluralism, with a state-owned oil refinery, Orlen, buying a local media group that owns 20 of the 24 regional newspapers in the country.

Established a year ago, these reports are meant to be a kind of health check and early warning system on the state of justice, media freedom and other institutions. But they are written in collaboration with member states, so are inevitably blander than many critics and nongovernmental organizations would prefer.

Still, European Union officials insist that these reports prompt debate, influence political agendas and are used by member states and the E.U. Parliament in making decisions. Mr. Reynders also said they would play an important part in future decisions about disbursing recovery funds.

Mr. Reynders described the reports as maybe one of the most important sources for the possible application of the new conditionality.

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E.U. Slams Poland and Hungary on Rule of Law, but to Little Effect - The New York Times

The European Union laid out ambitious plans to fight climate change through a variety of economic measures, including a proposed carbon border tax that would levy fees on imports based on the levels of carbon they produce.

The United States has expressed concern about the EUs plans to reduce carbon emissions by raising taxes and there are concerns about increased disputes within the World Trade Organization. But at the end of the day, it will likely have the longer-term effect of getting other nations to act in a similar matter, according to Columbia University professor of natural resource economics Scott Barrett.

This does put pressure on other countries like the United States to step up, Barrett said in a recent interview with Marketplace Morning Report host Andy Uhler. And from that point of view, its a positive move.

Barrett said that while the EU will likely see some trade retaliation going forward, Brussels latest move will force others to materially engage with climate change policies.

I think it is really inevitable that any serious action on climate change is going to have to link with trade, Barrett said. Its just finding the way to link trade and climate that is not disruptive to trade, does not damage relations among countries and does address the collective-action problem of getting countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Below is an edited transcript of Uhler and Barretts conversation.

Andy Uhler: Im curious, from your perspective, this idea of implementing climate change initiatives, implementing sort of the idea that we have to face climate change and the realities, and putting them into things like trade deals. Is this novel? Is it a new idea? How did this come about?

Scott Barrett: The idea has been kicking around a long time. And its actually come up in the climate negotiations before but never carried further. The final output you see is all silent on this issue. But it has come up before. It appeared in U.S. legislation, the so-called Waxman-Markey bill incorporated an element of this very similar to the EU proposal. And Europe itself adopted something like this for one sector, for international aviation, some years ago. But that was never fully implemented. Or to put it differently, they backed off from it when there was a threat of retaliation by other countries.

Uhler: You know, the United States has come out and said, Look, we dont have a price for carbon, how are we going to do this? Right? I mean, is there going to be pushback, just sort of inherently, when you have these sorts of things, I guess, traversing different platforms, right? You have trade deals, and then you have carbon?

Barrett: Well, I think theres got to be a mixed response. I think on the one hand, you know, what Europe is trying to do is push the negotiations along. Its main interest is ensuring that its own industries dont lose out from its more ambitious policy on climate. And also to make sure that emissions dont relocate, which is a big worry about the trade system, that if Europe tightens up, other countries may take up the slack, as it were, and emit more. I think, however, there will be some issues. One is that this is being done unilaterally, I think that would be of concern to some. There are some other issues about WTO compatibility, but we wont know how that would be resolved until a case, you know, comes to the WTO, if one does come. Probably the issues will be worked out in negotiations before that stage. But this does put pressure on other countries like the United States to step up. And from that point of view, its a positive move.

Barrett: One more thing, actually, I should say. You know, their concern is about something called leakage. So thats this problem that if one country, a group of countries, acts, their own costs go up, therefore, they lose comparative advantage in the greenhouse-gas-intensive industries to the other countries. So thats a real negative. But another aspect of this, which they cant control through this measure, is that their demand for fossil fuels will shrink because of their ambition, that will actually lower world prices for fossil fuels and cause other countries, indirectly, to increase their emissions. And theyre not able to control for that.

Uhler: In terms of setting that price for carbon, you know, we talk about this all the time in international relations, right? The idea of, you dont have a global governing body, you dont have somebody saying, Hey, this is how we do things. You have sort of that idea of sovereignty. Is this just inherent in anything that we try to do? When were dealing with sort of common goods, the idea of the world attacking climate change, again, is inherently difficult, right?

Barrett: Its inherently difficult. Its actually probably the most difficult problem of its kind weve ever seen. And weve made repeated attempts to try to negotiate an effective agreement over 30 years, investing an enormous amount of diplomatic effort. And theres not a lot to show for it. And the Paris Agreement is a voluntary agreement and so is relying on the different countries in the world to step up. And theyre really not doing that. This trade measure is not really getting at that directly. Its aim is just to neutralize the competitive effects. But a different way to think about this is actually to use trade as a means to enforce an agreement reached multilaterally to reduce emissions, in this case, probably just for the greenhouse-gas-intensive sectors. So I dont know if this is how things are going to finally end up. But I think this, well, if you look at the history with the aviation directive, well, first their instinct was to retaliate. Thats sovereignty, they dont want someone else to tell them what to do. But also it kind of kick-started some negotiations among countries on how to address this problem internationally. And its possible that that may also be an implication, or a final result, rather, of this unilateral effort by Europe and may actually just wake up other countries and get them to think more seriously about how theyre really going to attack this problem.

Uhler: Theres also weve talked about this 100 times on Marketplace but sort of the idea of a market opportunity here for countries if you get out in front. I mean, China has been pretty explicit about getting out in front of the idea of clean energy and renewables and things like that. There are economic benefits to being sort of the first out there, right?

Barrett: There are benefits, potentially, provided you get this transformation worldwide. So in other words, it has to be the case that the markets are changing everywhere, because then the countries that move early to develop the technologies will find markets. So youre playing this delicate game where on the one hand, youre trying to push out to urge the rest of the world to go. And youre hoping youre going to gain from that. But what happens if the rest of the world doesnt join you? And thats whats been going on for about 30 years. This is partly what theyre trying to get at with this measure. But there are actually other ways in which they might push it even further. But that really should be handled much more at the multilateral level. So I think another implication of this is that we may need to rethink how we negotiate agreements like the Paris Agreement, to bring in measures like this, that are negotiated and therefore agreed by the different countries, but that really propel action globally to address this great threat.

Uhler: These are proposals, these certainly arent laws. Youre going to have cases in front of the WTO, I would imagine, arguments of protectionism. Do we have a timeline idea of how this sort of plays out? You talked about 30 years of dealing with this. I hope thats not what were looking at.

Barrett: I dont think it is. I think Europe is going to be moving forward with this. They have a lot to work out. They have their own internal negotiations to sort out. But I think theyre going to want to move forward with this. Now as they do, well have to see how other countries respond as well. And as we did, we saw this played out before with the aviation directive. So this is basically the first shot across the bow. But I do think that no one can really accept the status quo ante because thats been ineffective. And I think it is really inevitable that any serious action on climate change is going to have to link with trade. Its just finding the way to link trade and climate that is not disruptive to trade, does not damage relations among countries and does address the collective-action problem of getting countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

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How will the world respond to the European Unions proposed carbon border tax? - Marketplace