The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) was established by Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002. Upon ratification of the Accession Treaty, Poland committed itself to implement EAW to its domestic legal system. This commitment was achieved by adopting amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure. Nevertheless, doubts concerning conformity of those amendments with the constitutional prohibition of extradition of a Polish citizen (see Article 55(1) of the Constitution) resulted in two applications having been submitted to the Constitutional Tribunal. The first application was made to examine the constitutionality of the Accession Treaty, the second one was a consequence of a legal question posed by the Regional Court of Gdansk. In a judgment responding to the legal question, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that under the amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure, EAW is a variant of extradition and, therefore, does not conform with the Constitution. Later, in a judgment concerning the Accession Treaty, the Constitutional Tribunal held that the Council Framework Decision on EAW had only a "guiding function", so it could not be subject to review under Article 55(1) of the Constitution". Irrespective of the provisions of the Framework Decision, it is impossible to find any reasons for finding the amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure unconstitutional. In the "Accession Judgment" the Constitutional Tribunal has examined constitutionality of international commitments adopted on the basis of the Treaty. The implementation of EAW is a kind of such a commitment, which means that in the moment of the accession the Treaty was not consistent with the constitutional prohibition of extradition of a Polish citizen. The Constitutional Tribunal decided on this case one year after Poland's accession to the European Union,. However, according to Article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties "a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.". Hence, review of the constitutionality of the Accession Treaty had made sense before its ratification, and under the procedure of the so-called preventive review. In that situation, an urgent need appears for modification of the review procedures in relation to Community law. In lack of such modification, there is danger that the Constitution may be overinterpreted to prove that already existing Community law is consistent with it or that contradicting legal norms will be in force in the territory of the Republic of Poland at the same time. European integration often requires a new approach to many issues and legal solutions. Nevertheless, application of classical rules for establishing an existing legal norm should serve as a starting point of this process and the prohibition of breaching unequivocally formulated provisions of Poland's Constitution should be observed.
