Juncker sees little prospect of invoking article 7 regarding Poland

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday that regarding Poland’s disputed constitutional and media shake-up there is little prospect of invoking article 7 of the EU treaty (suspension of Council voting rights for egregious violations of EU norms), the EU Observer reported. “I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Juncker said at a meeting with the Dutch EU presidency in Amsterdam. The EU Commission will debate the Polish situation at its regular meeting next Wednesday. The debate itself marks the first step of a special rule-of-law monitoring process created in 2014, the EU Observer said. cep legal expert Urs Pötzsch told Spiegel Online he expected that the EU will grant Poland a generous time frame to get its laws in line with EU principles. "Nobody wants an escalation," he said.