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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.

In Central Europe, especially in Hungary and Poland, over the last years there are serious problems related to democracy, constitutional balance and the rule of law. In a short time, the illiberal political leaders put into practice an order that calls into question principles that form part of the axiological foundation of the European Union. This article explains why illiberalism has been so successful in this region and which techniques have been used to reinforce the political capture of various state institutions,especially the judiciary. The article also contains a critical analysis of the European Union’s attitude towards Hungarian and Polish illiberalism. The general hypothesis of this study is that Hungary and Poland have gone so far towards constitutional illiberalism, that it is extremely difficult to indicate the simple legal remedies for rapid return of these countries to liberal democracy.

The article shows the process of normativization of scientific knowledge in the European Convention on Human Rights system. It argues that scientific and technological knowledge substantially impact tools used by the European Court of Human Rights, such as the living instrument doctrine, positive obligations, and European consensus.

This conference speech argues that the judgement of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal K 3/21 can be understood only in the context of the current conflict between the Polish government and the European Union. Moreover, some other details, including how the unconstitutionality of the EU Treaty provisions was formulated, are important. The development of the judicial independence doctrine in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union may cause discussion. Nonetheless, the judgement K 3/21 is not an example of constructive debate about the division of the competences in the European legal sphere. It constitutes an example of the abuse of the constitutional identity and it resolves a false problem, as in reality there is no conflict between the norms of the Polish Constitution and the EU law as far as the guarantees of the judicial independence are concerned. Moreover, the judgement K 3/21 was delivered by the Constitutional Tribunal which itself lacks the guarantees of independence, what was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights (7.05.2021 Xero Flor, 4907/18).

The conference presentation explains the use of the scientific data in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights