Poland won’t bow to EU ‘blackmail’, says PM
BRUSSELS: Poland will not bow to European Union “blackmail” but will seek to solve ongoing disputes, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, as he arrived on Thursday to defend his nation before a meeting of fellow leaders in an escalating ideological battle.
Long-running tensions between Poland’s ruling nationalists and the bloc’s liberal majority have risen sharply since Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal
ruled on October 7 that elements of EU law were incompatible with the country’s charter.
In challenging a central tenet of EU integration the case risks precipitating a new fundamental crisis for the bloc — still grappling with the after-effects of Brexit — as well as Poland losing generous
European handouts.
“Some European institutions assume the right to decide on matters that have not been assigned to them,” Morawiecki said at the start of two days of talks among the bloc’s 27 national leaders in Brussels.
“We will not act under the pressure of blackmail, we are ready for dialogue, we do not agree to the ever-expanding competences (of EU institutions), but we will of course talk about how to resolve the current disputes in dialogue.”
His wealthier Western counterparts are particularly keen to prevent their governments’ cash contributions to the EU benefiting socially conservative politicians who they see as undercutting human rights fixed in European laws.
“We in Ireland are very concerned,” Prime Minister Micheal Martin said. “The primacy of EU law... is critical for the protection of citizens all across Europe.”