Brussels, 18/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 18 January, the Presidents of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and of Poland, Andrzej Duda, both called for an end to the “ hysteria” over the question of whether the Polish government is in compliance with the principles underlying the rule of law.
Although Tusk and Duda have very different political affinities, they nonetheless showed a certain amount of complicity at a press conference they held after their bilateral meeting in Brussels. The President of the European Council certainly ribbed his guest playfully, taking advantage of the current popularity for the American saga Star Wars to call upon him to “come over to the light side of the force” (we've been there for quite some time already, the President of Poland replied). However, he took pains to stress his concerns for the country which he led for seven years as Prime Minister, and its relations with the Union.
Tusk expressed the view that the main thing now is for Poland to hold onto the reputation it has built up over recent years and the nature of its relationship with the EU, which have been built on common interests and mutual benefits since day one. He explained that it is all the more important to safeguard these achievements as the country's reputation has been “up and down” lately.
As the cause of this phenomenon, he referred mainly to the “hysterical” debate which followed the European Commission's decision to trigger the of law mechanism (see EUROPE 11467). He said in passing that he had little enthusiasm for this initiative of the Commission and did not feel that it was necessary to put “Poland's situation on the agenda of the forthcoming European Council meetings”. He called on all sides to show restraint and to end propaganda practices, by political figures in Warsaw and in Brussels. The former are quite wrong to say that Poland has “enemies” or that there is a “conspiracy” against the country, and the latter should show greater “sensitivity”.
Duda said that the nature of the current debate had been caused by a “media circus”, based on a distortion of reality. He called for a calm dialogue based on confirmed facts. Poland is not calling its membership of the Union into question, but it is calling for its political autonomy to be recognised, he stressed. In support of his words, he drew a comparison between the current negotiations with London on the United Kingdom's membership of the EU and the case of Poland. He argued that in both situations, it is simply a matter of the expression of the right of each member state to have “sovereign” capacities for action and the need to feel “respected”. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)