Polish 'coup' dispute threatens Polish-German relations

Poland’s new government has traded insults with the head of the EU Parliament, in a war of words which threatens to also harm Polish-German relations.

Martin Schulz i, a German Socialist who has led the EU assembly since 2012, told a German radio station, Deutschlandfunk, on Monday (14 December) the Polish government’s attempt to stuff the Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal with political allies violates EU norms.

“What is happening in Poland has the characteristics of a coup and is dramatic. I am going on the principle that we are going to discuss this in detail this week at the European Parliament, or at the latest, during the session in January,” he said.

Giacomo Fassina, his spokesman, later told the Bloomberg news agency that Schulz has “concern on one of the founding principles of the rule of law in the EU, namely the division of powers with a democracy.”

The Polish PM, Beata Szydlo i, from the ruling Law and Justice party, the same day demanded an “apology.”

“Something is wrong when the European Parliament president expresses his opinion in this way about a member state,” she told press in Warsaw.

The Polish foreign minister, Witold Wlaszczykowski, said in a written note: “Such a high-ranking politician should be far better informed before making public statements.”

He also told press in Brussels on Monday he’s happy that Polish MEPs from the opposition Civic Platform party prompted Schulz to delay the EU parliament debate because it would be “harmful for Poland.”

“This debate is taking place in Poland, about the disposition of our institutions, there’s no need for it [the debate] in the EU,” he added.

Echoing Hungarian PM Viktor Orban i, who once said he wants to build an “illiberal democracy,” Wlaszczykowski noted: “There are different forms of democracy in the European Union … so there’s no basis to stigmatise Poland.”

In a sign the dispute risks bleeding into German relations, he told German daily Berliner Zeitung the same day that Berlin should not expect Polish solidarity on refugee relocation because it kept restrictions on Polish workers coming to Germany after enlargement in 2004.

The new Polish interior minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, went further in November.

He said on Polish TV that Schulz, who’d also criticised PiS on refugees, is guilty of “German arrogance.”

“We're talking in Warsaw, which was destroyed by Germans. In [Warsaw’s] Wola [district] 50,000 men, women and children were murdered by officers of the German state,” he added.

The harsh rhetoric echoes previous Polish-German clashes when Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is still the PiS leader and power behind the throne, was Polish PM back in 2006.

Some Polish diplomats say Kaczynski’s abbrasive style helps Poland to win battles in the EU Council, where member states meet. But others are worried that it injures Poland’s international image.

The New York Times, the US paper of record, on Tuesday, published a story with a laundry list of PiS sins.

It noted that, the constitutional crisis aside, it has: quashed a court case into abuse of power by its former security chief; threatened to crack down on independent media; tried to stop the production of a play, Death and the Maiden, by Elfriede Jelinek, on grounds it’s “pornographic”; and refused to display the EU flag at high-level events.

It quoted Robert Kropiwnicki, a Civic Platform MP, as saying Kaczynski is “developing Putinist standards,” by reference to Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin i.

It also said PiS is fuelling “nationalist fervour,” which saw a right-wing youth group, in the Polish city of Wroclaw last month, burn the effigy of an Orthodox Jew.

For their part, Polish academics have also voiced outcry on PiS’ constitutional shenanigans.

Staff at the law faculty of Wroclaw University on Monday voted a resolution saying they ave “deep concern” on the government’s “lack of respect of … democratic standards.”

Mikolaj Czesniki, a scholar of politics at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, also told Gazeta Wyborcza, a PiS-critical daily: “I’m quite sure that many people, who have no ties to the current parliamentary majority [PiS], but who friends in it, are phoning their PiS buddies to ask: ‘What the hell are you doing?’.”