Open Access

Adam Krzywon, Nuria Magaldi

• On 7 October 2020, the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland declared the unconstitutionality of essential provisions of the Treaty on European Union, calling into question the principle of the primacy of EU law (judgment K 3/21). This decision is closely related to the Polish judicial reform that has been severely criticised by the CJEU for violating standards of judicial inde-pendence. This study first explains the process of political capture of the Polish Constitu-tional Court and then looks at the content of the K 3/21 judgment: the Polish Constitutional Tribunal attempt to reject the aforementioned case law of the CJEU on the grounds that the EU institutions have exceeded their competences. Secondly, this study aims to determine the extent of the Union’s competences in the area of the national judiciary, to explain the me-thods of resolving potential conflicts between national and EU laws and to analyse the conse-quences of the primacy principle. The key argument of this part of the article is that national judges have the faculty to examine, ex officio, the compatibility of a given national provision with EU law. This power cannot be limited by any national act, nor by the fact that there is a prior declaration of its constitutionality.