Europe's eastern rebels expose next fault line for EU leaders

Brussels

EUROPEAN leaders are declaring the continent's financial crisis to be over, but now a political one is fermenting.

A battle between European Union regulators and the Polish government over its plans to weaken the judiciary's independence is splitting eastern and western Europe in a way that the euro region erupted along a north-south fault line. As Greece returned to the bond market last week, Poland faced the threat of unprecedented EU penalties from the first-ever probe of a member's respect for the rule of law.