The leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has vowed the country will not be “blackmailed” into giving up its “identity” or “freedom” by the European Union.
Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, regarded by many as the power behind the proverbial throne in Poland, as he still heads the party from which Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Andrzej Duda are drawn, was responding to attempts by the EU institutions and the bloc’s dominant, left-liberal governments in countries such as Germany to force Poland to give way on its conservative policies.
PiS is refusing to submit to the compulsory migrant redistribution quotas the EU has attempted to impose on member-states to deal with the fallout from Germany’s unilateral decision to effectively open the bloc’s borders in 2015 — which PiS opposed from the get-go — and is also attempting to reform what it sees as an activist and nepotistic judiciary shaped by the former Communist regime.
The EU regards the former as a defiance of its supranational authority, and the latter as an attack on the so-called “rule of law” — although it was less vocal about the former, europhile-globalist Civic Platform (PO) government attempting to pack Poland’s top court in its final days in office.
Consequently, there has been a push by the EU institutions and Western European governments to link EU funding to compliance on the so-called rule of law, with the European Parliament’s Vice President Katarina Barley, of Germany, suggesting that Poland and like-minded Hungary should be “starved financially” in order to force them to submit.
Kaczyński, however, has responded by warning that the Polish government will resort to the nuclear option if such tactics are employed, vetoing the European Union budget and coronavirus fund outright.
“We will defend our identity, freedom and sovereignty at any price. We will not succumb to financial blackmail,” Kaczyński insisted.
“If the threats and blackmail are maintained, then we will firmly defend the vital interest of Poland. Veto. Non possumus,” he added, vowing that “this is how we will act against anyone who will apply any extortion to us.”
The Polish senator compared this “serious battle with those who want to impose their values on us within the EU or even subordinate us” to his country’s experience under the Cold War era puppet government. During this time, he recalled, Poland was allowed to retain its separation from the Soviet Union, and a degree of its Christian identity — but was nevertheless firmly under Moscow’s control, with the Church systematically repressed.
Poland has also been clashing with the EU over its legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman and opposition to same-sex couple adoption, as well as the creation of so-called “LGBT-free zones” by some local authorities in the country.
These have often been painted by left-liberal and foreign media and politicians as places where being gay is forbidden, although in fact they are merely areas which have passed non-binding resolutions against things like lessons on transgenderism and same-sex intercourse in schools.
Conservative politicians in Poland have suggested that the unusual amount of attention being paid to the issue in Brussels, where the President of the European Commission is a former member of Angela Mekel’s government, is really just a way to punish the Polish government for its opposition to Germany’s Russian gas projects.
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