How Poland and Hungary Are Challenging European Law

The U.K. left the European Union to escape its jurisdiction. Germany’s Constitutional Court took it head-on. Now Poland and Hungary are challenging its supremacy. We’re talking about EU law, the legal order that covers all 27 member states. Although each country’s government has agreed to follow the code, their own national courts don’t always like what they see. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders has warned that attempts to subvert the primacy of EU rules could tear the trading bloc apart.

The law of what is now the European Union goes back to the Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, that was intended to help European countries trade with each other and boost their economies in the aftermath of World War II. Setting out principles like the free movement of goods, capital and workers, the treaty and others that followed provide the legal underpinning for the resulting volumes of laws, regulations and directives. Once they are adopted at the EU level, each member state must implement the policy in its national legislation.