Poland is a problem for the EU precisely because it will not leave

BREXIT, BEFOREEUEUEUEUEU it happened, was imagined in many forms. Hard, soft, Norwegian, Swiss or Turkish. Briefly, an Albanian option was discussed. Often it was just “clean”. A “clean Brexit” would free Britain from the ’s single market, customs union and its courts, advocates said. Just as there are many ways of leaving the , there are many ways of remaining. There is the clean version, in which countries quietly accept the ’s strictures. Then there is the messy version, where governments foul up the club. Think of it as “dirty remain”.To see dirty remain in action, look at Poland. Its Constitutional Tribunal challenged the legal order of the club in a ruling on October 7th. In a case brought by the Polish prime minister, the court, which is stuffed with allies of the government, ruled that fundamental parts of law do not trump Poland’s constitution. The judgment, which was exactly what the government wanted, has punctured six decades of European case law. In short, the ’s supreme court is no longer supreme, as far as Poland is concerned.