[yanmaani]

IANAL, but as far as I know, EU laws are more important than national laws (you can search "Supremacy of EU law") except in Germany, so the question is if it violates the equivalent of the constitution of the EU.

According to EU officials, it does not.

I've sent out some e-mails, if what you say is true I will amend it.

[coutego]

> except in Germany

It applies everywhere. Germany and Poland courts said that they interpret this principle is against their constitutions. The consequence is that they need to either:

- Change their interpretation of their constitution

- Change their constitution

- Leave the EU

It's a basic principle of participation in a Union. Germany's or Poland's case is the same as if a State of the US decided that some federal law or the US constitution doesn't apply in that territory because their constitution prevails or that the state supreme court can overrule the decisions of the US supreme court.

The EU case is much easier than the US, of course, because EU Member States have the right to unilaterally decide to secede. So they can always just leave if they really don't want to comply with EU laws. They have no excuse whatsoever to whine about them.

[MinorTom]

> - Change their constitution

That isn't possible

> - Change their interpretation of their constitution

The BVerfG tries really hard to interpret the constitution in a way in line with EU regulations, but it reserves the right not to (if they're "ultra vires" - beyond their power).

> - Leave the EU

Not going to happen.

> It's a basic principle of participation in a Union.

Note that the supremacy of the German constitution over EU law was well known at the time of signing the relevant treaties and all parties agreed to proceed anyway.

> Germany's or Poland's case is the same as if a State of the US decided that some federal law or the US constitution doesn't apply [...]

The EU is not a nation state.

[arlort]

There are some significant asterisks

The first is that it's not that EU laws are more important, it's that by ratifying the EU treaties the members have ceded the power to act in some areas to the EU as a whole.

This applies uniformly to all member states, Germany included.

The issue that can arise is when there's a disagreement on whether or not a specific power was ceded or not, the problem being that on the one side we have the national constitutional (or equivalent) courts which are the ultimate authority for the member in question, while on the other we have the ECJ which is defined as the ultimate authority in what the Treaties say

What you're probably referring to is the recent case in which the German ConstCourt said that a judgement by the ECJ was incorrect and adopted its own, it was then resolved by some judicial diplomacy. That issue remains and it's arguably inevitable whenever multiple levels of government share power.

A further asterisk is that this is a freedom of expression issue, which is handled at three distinct levels.

At the EU level the law is likely to be found partially in contradiction with the Charter of Fundamental rights (which only applies to EU law and EU institutions or national institutions executing EU law), I don't think the broadcasting ban in itself would be but I'm pretty sure that someone posting clips of RT for instance would be found protected by the charter

However there's also a national level since the EU doesn't actually have any own enforcement, therefore the individual countries will have to adopt actual punishments and enforcement mechanisms which are then subject to respecting the national freedom of expression requirements (fundamental rights are generally of constitutional significance, so they're at least equal in precedence to EU treaties), technically the EU commission could start an infringement procedure if it deems the actions taken unsatisfactory and that process ultimately ends at the ECJ, however while the ECJ could tell the member state it has to effectively ignore their own court (which the member state can't do anyway) but since that would lead to an unresolvable constitutional crisis the ECJ is unlikely to pick that hill to die on and it has a pretty convenient clause in its mandate saying "we will respect each country's constitutional identity" which would be easily applicable here

Finally there's the ECHR, which is another international court, integrated in the member states legal system by its own treaty (confusingly the acronym is the same for the court and for the treaty) with the sole purpose of serving as a baseline for fundamental rights. The EU is not a party to the ECHR treaty (accession stalled) but all of its members are, so if any member were challenged in this court and said "we're violating article 10 because of this EU law" the ECHR would say "cool story, don't care" (if it finds a breach). This is not immediately a precedent for other countries, but others would likely file similar motions

More realistically however this is just going to be interpreted to prevent the sanctioned entities from setting up shells companies to evade it