The European Council President Donald Tusk, speaking in a personal capacity, launched an attack on Sunday 19 November on the PiS government in power in Poland which he accused of conducting policies worthy of the Kremlin.
On his Twitter account, Tusk expressed concern at the similarity of the policies of the right-wing government in Poland and what he called “a Kremlin plan”, highlighting the current dispute with Ukraine (over the exhumation of Poles massacred in Volhynia, a region in the east of pre-1939 Poland and currently part of Ukraine), isolation within the EU, departure from the rule of law and independent courts and attacks on the NGO sector and free media. “Too similar to sleep peacefully”, he tweeted.
Tusk has done “nothing for Poland” in his role as president of the European Council, immediately retorted Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo in her own tweet. She went on to accuse him of “using his position to attack the Polish government”. “He is attacking Poland”, she is reported by AFP as saying.
Tusk, a former liberal prime minister of Poland, has been depicted as an enemy by the nationalistic, conservative PiS which claimed power from him in 2015. The Polish government, indeed, voted this year against renewal of his mandate as president of the European Council. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)