EU exposed as Poland row unravels bloc’s ‘major weaknesses’

“The great success of the EU as a community of law lies precisely in the fact that national authorities upheld that principle for many decades after 1964, despite it never having been expressly endorsed by the EU’s member countries.”

When “the EU’s member countries had an opportunity to explicitly recognize EU law’s primacy over national law, they didn’t take it”, the professors said.

“The ill-fated Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe included an article enshrining EU legal supremacy.

“That provision, among others, was dropped from its successor, the Lisbon Treaty, after the EU’s constitution-making project proved a bridge too far for European citizens.