EU-Polish dispute might have tragic consequences – Lithuania's Nauseda

VILNIUS – The ongoing dispute between Poland and the European Union over the primacy of EU law might lead to tragic consequences, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda says.

"Really, we are very much concerned over what is going on in this legal dispute. The dispute is of a legal nature but it also has huge political consequences and those consequences might be just tragic. Tragic for us, tragic for Poland, tragic for the EU," Nauseda told a joint press conference with his visiting Polish counterpart in Vilnius on Tuesday.

According to the Lithuanian president, a search for a compromise is the only way out of this crisis.

"Therefore, we must do everything, and I personally will do everything possible, for the European Commission and the Polish government not to move away from each other, but to move closer to each other in search of a compromise," Nauseda said, adding that Lithuania stands ready to act as a mediator.

Nauseda also said the wish to link the implementation of the principles of the rule of all with financial resources was "morally detrimental".

"It's a very bad precedent. Even it's possible to do that legally, morally it would be a very detrimental precedent that would do incomprehensible damage to the EU's unity," he said.

Duda told the press conference that there were "a lot of non-precisely applied notions" in the media on this issue.

"The Polish Constitutional Tribunal said there's supremacy of the Polish Constitution (…) over EU law. It also said that EU bodies have as much competence as much Poland agreed to hand over. But where EU institutions were not allowed to deal with issues, (…) so we underlined that we want to have our supremacy where we did not hand it over," the Polish president said.

Duda also said Poland's happy with being an EU member state but wants the Community to work as a union of free and independent countries, adding that there's no basis to speak about Poland's withdrawal from the EU.

"The opposition is raising the issue of "Polexit" but we do not speak about hat," the Polish leader said.

Earlier this month, Poland's Constitutional Tribunal rejected the principle of supremacy of EU law over national laws, ruling that some articles of the EU treaty run counter to the country's Constitution.