From a purely procedural point of view, the Judicial Reform tried to limit the political involvement of judges and increased the Polish Parliament’s right to have a say in the personal composition of the high Judiciary, as is also the case in numerous other Western countries, above all in Germany.

But the quarrel is not just about procedural politics; it is also and perhaps essentially about values: when joining the European Union, Polish conservatives expected the project to be grounded in a common respect for fundamental social institutions such as the classical family, personal propriety, national identity or Western civilisation.

Yet the European elites have increasingly turned towards the values of radical liberalism. Using the dynamic “openness” of the European legal system, known as the “Méthode Monnet”, the European Court of Justice has codified vague key words such as “diversity”, “tolerance”, “respect for minorities”, “justice” or “equity” in order to indirectly impose a new legal framework devoid of any democratic backing by member states. Such measures mask the ideological conflicts between the liberalism of Brussels, Berlin and Paris and the conservatism of Warsaw and Budapest as a legal battle between a pretended “rule of law” and an alleged “national populism”.

Had the Polish Constitutional Court accepted the superiority of European over Polish constitutional law, it would have meant the total surrender of everything built up by the present Polish government; it also would have laid the groundwork for a new Tusk-government, leading to a never-ending series of politically motivated trials against all high representatives of the present majority.

Will this decision be a further step towards the Polexit? It is hardly a present possibility — most Poles, the government included, are keen to share a peaceful and ever closer common future with their neighbours. But things have come to the point where some groups are increasingly starting to see the EU as the worst enemy of European patriotism.