1. An overview of the legitimacy of the House of Commons

The Parliament is the law-making body of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Even after many reforms in recent years, it remains the main institution responsible for drafting and passing the legislation. As prof. A.V. Dicey points out in his work on constitutional law, the sovereignty of the British Parliament is the dominant characteristic of our political institutions and consists of the monarch, the House of Lords and the House of Commons (Dicey, 1924).

In light of the on-going circumstances in the past several years, the possibility of restructuring the EU became more and more pronounced. Opening the procedure found in Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union by the European Commission against Poland (December 20, 2017) and Hungary (September 12, 2018), as well as the United Kingdom, which formally left the EU on 31st of January 2020, points out the tensions caused by the relations between the EU and the Member States that acutely require a balanced solution. We can say that these conflicts mostly revolve around the concept of sovereignty, which shaped international relations since the 17th century. It can be argued that sovereignty has a different meaning now in the EU, but in fact, its meaning has always been changing, depending on the social, legal, economic, and political context. This paper compares the influence of international and EU-law on European states' sovereignty, summarising the most important conventions and a few cases related to the topic.

1. Introduction

The presidential elections in Poland are held every five years upon the order set out by the Marshal of the Sejm (which is the lower house of the Polish Parliament) unless for some reason, mainly due to death or resignation, a president's term ends prematurely. As the current five-year term of President Andrzej Duda will end soon, the incumbent Marshal of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek, ordered to hold the presidential election on the 10th of May. Given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the government proposed the idea to organise all-postal voting, unprecedented in Polish history, and initiated a bill to this end, which could enter into force only a couple of days ahead of the planned election. Critics, however, voiced serious concerns about the provisions of the bill, pointed to the institutional inability to organise the election in such a short time, and noted that it can still increase the risk of exposing electorates to coronavirus. Under mounting domestic and international pressure, the turbulent legislative process, and unparalleled political and legal incidents, the Polish government decided to postpone the presidential election and the Marshal of the Sejm ordered the election, for the 28th of June.

For a long time after the Maastricht Treaty was adopted (1992), discussions were held concerning the establishment of a prosecutor for the European Union, in order to protect the financial interests of the Union in a more efficient way. Several academic papers and Commission soft law instruments have been published, and those led to the insertion of Article 86 in the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union through the Lisbon Treaty (2007). This provided the possibility to establish a European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). The Commission published its proposal in 2013 and the Council Regulation implementing enhanced cooperation on the establishment of the EPPO was finally adopted on October 12, 2017. Enhanced cooperation meant that only 22 Member States out of the 28 participated in the establishment of the EPPO.

The establishment of a body of the European Union charged to conduct investigations and prosecutions can only be considered an improvement for the European