Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law @HECParis | Democracy Fellow @Harvard | Founder @TheGoodLobby @EurJRR | Formerly @EUCourtPress | #YGL #EYL
Europe
Joined January 2009
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Europe doesn't need to become America to succeed:
Supporters of deregulation want Europe to be more like the US. But that would serve only American interests.
My latest in @guardian today
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
As expected, the EU Commission relies on artificial intelligence to pursue its simplification (rectius deregulation) agenda
This is set to backfire by leading to legal uncertainty and litigation before @IntlCrimCourt
politico.eu/article/commissi…
Big tech ‘s connivence with the Trump administration is backfiring spectacularly and big
They urgently need a new corporate political strategy but is already too late
ft.com/content/6b64ea5b-48c3…
That’s a false equivalence, why is it so?
PO: 2 premature Constitutional Trubunal appointments, and those were struck down by the court itself.
PiS: ~3,000 illegal judicial appointments, CT doubles, captured NCJ, fake courts, ~1,300 complaints in Strasbourg.
Not "both sides”!
Read Xero Flor v Poland (ECtHR, 2021)
You can't just ignore the ACTUAL fact that the outgoing PO party put forward illegitimate judges first. Neither side is blameless. Neither side has the moral authority.
And you also cannot ignore that the Commission itself observed irregularities in the Polish judicial system, both corruption and the ongoing influence of former communists, in its own investigations ahead of accession. Those irregularities were never dealt with, albeit they applied to the broader judicial apparatus, not just the Tribunal.
A Soros report into the Polish judicial system in 2001 found exactly the same problems. And there is little evidence that anyone addressed these issues in the years after accession. In contrast, subsequent EU reports found the perception of corruption was only increasing. Given polish politics was at that time mostly dominated by the ruling left-wing successor parties to the communist system, this means these critiques apply to them.
That's not to suggest I think PiS are blameless. I just think the situation is not as one-sided as everyone is making out.
peacemaker.un.org/sites/defa…?
@battleforeurope
Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 retweeted
As fellow Europeans celebrate the Democrats' gains in the US midterms, a word of caution:
it would be a grave mistake to read this blue wave as a path back to the old transatlantic relationship.
No Democratic resurgence can restore Europe comfortable outsourcing of its strategic choices to Washington.
That era is over, and for good.
Europe’s strategic autonomy must remain a polar star, a journey that must be structural in nature and not contingent on who holds power in Washington.
Who captured the Polish Constitutional Tribunal?
PiS, not Tusk
Who led legal Polexit?
PiS, not Tusk
The rest is history in the making
It was the outgoing party of Tusk (PO) that first attempted to illegally pack the court in 2015. PIS then responded with an overcorrection of their own. But the first provocative move was by PO.
On the primacy issue the constitutional court defended Polish primacy in 2005 in many areas. It’s not at all clear cut.
As fellow Europeans celebrate the Democrats' gains in the US midterms, a word of caution:
it would be a grave mistake to read this blue wave as a path back to the old transatlantic relationship.
No Democratic resurgence can restore Europe comfortable outsourcing of its strategic choices to Washington.
That era is over, and for good.
Europe’s strategic autonomy must remain a polar star, a journey that must be structural in nature and not contingent on who holds power in Washington.
Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 retweeted
Delighted to debunk your debut
1. EU primacy is in Declaration 17 to Lisbon, and in the acquis when the Polish Parliament ratified EU accession in 2004. Primacy stems
also from Art. 91(3) of Poland's own Constitution.
2. The German Constitutional Court defied the CJEU in 2020 and no one called it a rule-of-law breach, because Karlsruhe is lawfully composed.
Warsaw's Tribunal isn't, per Strasbourg (2021) and Luxembourg (2025) judgments.
The coup was 2015. The rest is conspiracy #Poland
Delighted to debut in @Weltwoche with this piece about Donald Tusk’s EU-backed constitutional coup. In it, I explain that even though, at face value, this might seem like little more than a showdown between the government and opposition over control of the country’s highest court, it is actually part of a much larger power struggle within the EU establishment.
At its core, this is a battle over sovereignty in its most fundamental form: which legal order should prevail, the Polish constitution or EU law, when the two collide? In the past, the Tribunal has argued that the final word lies with the Polish constitution, not EU law — something Brussels has never forgiven it for. The supremacy of EU law over national law does not exist in any treaties; rather, it was created by the EU judiciary through a ruling made by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) known as Costa v ENEL in 1964. Since then, it has become the engine of EU “integration by law”: by constantly creating “laws” through its rulings, almost always in favor of “more Europe”, the ECJ has effectively become the bloc’s most important legislative and, indeed, constitution-writing body, thus hollowing out from above of national constitutional and legal systems. Alec Stone Sweet, an international-law expert, has termed this a “juridical coup d’état”.
A national constitutional court that rejects this principle represents an existential threat to Brussels. This is the real reason the EU was so adamantly opposed to Poland under the previous national-conservative government (and to Orbán’s Hungary for the same reason). This is ultimately what Brussels and Tusk refer to when they accuse the previous government, and the Tribunal itself, of having violated the rule of law. What they mean is that they dared to challenge the rule of Brussels’s law. This is the law Tusk wants to restore.
Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 retweeted
We replied to that question in the 1960s.
EU Law primes over domestic law.
That’s the precondition to operate as a community based on the rule of law
“The drama in Warsaw is symptomatic of a much larger conflict brewing across Europe: a clash between two concepts of legitimate authority. Is a country’s constitution national, to be interpreted by domestic authorities, or is it subordinate to EU rules, to be interpreted by higher European institutions?” Worth reading by @j_grygiel wsj.com/opinion/polands-cons…
Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 retweeted
(SOUND ON)
Poles are peacefully gathering around the Constitutional Tribunal to support the restoration of its lawful composition and functioning, not to storm it.
So much for PiS's claim that restoring the rule of law is a "coup."
Poles deserve a court that answers to the law, not to a party. Again. #Poland
Delighted to debunk your debut
1. EU primacy is in Declaration 17 to Lisbon, and in the acquis when the Polish Parliament ratified EU accession in 2004. Primacy stems
also from Art. 91(3) of Poland's own Constitution.
2. The German Constitutional Court defied the CJEU in 2020 and no one called it a rule-of-law breach, because Karlsruhe is lawfully composed.
Warsaw's Tribunal isn't, per Strasbourg (2021) and Luxembourg (2025) judgments.
The coup was 2015. The rest is conspiracy #Poland
Delighted to debut in @Weltwoche with this piece about Donald Tusk’s EU-backed constitutional coup. In it, I explain that even though, at face value, this might seem like little more than a showdown between the government and opposition over control of the country’s highest court, it is actually part of a much larger power struggle within the EU establishment.
At its core, this is a battle over sovereignty in its most fundamental form: which legal order should prevail, the Polish constitution or EU law, when the two collide? In the past, the Tribunal has argued that the final word lies with the Polish constitution, not EU law — something Brussels has never forgiven it for. The supremacy of EU law over national law does not exist in any treaties; rather, it was created by the EU judiciary through a ruling made by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) known as Costa v ENEL in 1964. Since then, it has become the engine of EU “integration by law”: by constantly creating “laws” through its rulings, almost always in favor of “more Europe”, the ECJ has effectively become the bloc’s most important legislative and, indeed, constitution-writing body, thus hollowing out from above of national constitutional and legal systems. Alec Stone Sweet, an international-law expert, has termed this a “juridical coup d’état”.
A national constitutional court that rejects this principle represents an existential threat to Brussels. This is the real reason the EU was so adamantly opposed to Poland under the previous national-conservative government (and to Orbán’s Hungary for the same reason). This is ultimately what Brussels and Tusk refer to when they accuse the previous government, and the Tribunal itself, of having violated the rule of law. What they mean is that they dared to challenge the rule of Brussels’s law. This is the law Tusk wants to restore.
“They are plural and uncoordinated, with no single leader or programme,” said Alberto Alemanno, professor of European Union law and policy at HEC Paris Business School. “So it’s less a rejection of one policy and more a signal that people no longer trust the system to deliver. That’s why they are so critical.”
aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/4…
Let me get this straight:
The Tusk government should continue restoring the Constitutional Tribunal.
It should do so through transparent, publicly defensible procedures anchored in European judgments; better communicate the rationale of its actions; and invite independent scrutiny of its methods rather than resist it.
The test is not whether Poland can free its Tribunal from those who captured it. It is whether it can build one that is also independent of the government now committed to repairing it.
Redemocratisation means restoring the rule of law, not swapping one form of political control for another.
READ my latest for EUobserver lnkd.in/etA3bxbf
We replied to that question in the 1960s.
EU Law primes over domestic law.
That’s the precondition to operate as a community based on the rule of law
“The drama in Warsaw is symptomatic of a much larger conflict brewing across Europe: a clash between two concepts of legitimate authority. Is a country’s constitution national, to be interpreted by domestic authorities, or is it subordinate to EU rules, to be interpreted by higher European institutions?” Worth reading by @j_grygiel wsj.com/opinion/polands-cons…
(SOUND ON)
Poles are peacefully gathering around the Constitutional Tribunal to support the restoration of its lawful composition and functioning, not to storm it.
So much for PiS's claim that restoring the rule of law is a "coup."
Poles deserve a court that answers to the law, not to a party. Again. #Poland
Microsoft software plays a key part in running an app used by Israel to control Palestinian mobility in the occupied territories.
It’s hosted in Ireland 🇮🇪 @IrishTimes @Ireland2026eu
euobserver.com/246599/micros…
