Poland told to ‘respect the rules’ of EU club in rule-of-law row

Published

3 years ago

October 21, 2021

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The argument now distracting and dominating the European Union is an unequal battle with the potential for far-reaching consequences.

On one side is Poland, enthusiastically supported by Hungary, and determined to prove that one of the fundamental tenets of European solidarity isn’t so fundamental after all.

On the other side is, well, just about everyone else. Some of them pressing for a conciliatory “let’s not be too harsh” debate; others wanting to go in hard.

The cause of all this anger is one of those bits of domestic news that sounds dry but has explosive potential.

In short, the country’s top court, acting on a request from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, declared that, in some areas, the national constitution took precedence over European law.

And that has set great, big alarm bells ringing. Because the golden rule of EU Club is that EU Club laws always come first. They must take primacy, to coin a phrase that has popped up a lot over the past few days.

“If you want to have the advantages of being in a club, then you need to respect the rules,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo said. “You can’t be a member of a club and say ‘the rules don’t apply to me’.”

The Polish Prime Minister does not agree, accusing the EU of “blackmail” because of suggestions that Poland could now face sanctions. He said his country was “ready for dialogue” but refused to distance himself from the controversial court ruling.

There is no mechanism for throwing Poland out of the EU (not that anybody would want to go anywhere near that far) and, realistically, Poland has no desire to leave, either. So instead, the question is whether the EU wants to levy a punishment.

That could mean withholding financial payments, for instance, or curtailing the country’s rights as a member state.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented – Poland is already facing daily fines of half a million Euros for continuing to extract lignite from a mine near the border with the Czech Republic in defiance of a court order. There is a suspicion that Mr Morawiecki is rather relishing his battle with Brussels.

But he is not alone. Viktor Orban, the populist Prime Minister of Hungary, has repeatedly infuriated the EU with his own policies. Here, he came to town ready to leap to Poland’s defence.

“Poland – the best country in Europe – there’s no need to have any sanctions,” he said.

“We are not building fronts here, we are fighting for issues which are important for our own nations. So we make an alliance and fight together – this is the logic we are doing here. It’s not like the cold war or something like that, creating blocs.”

So, I asked Mr Orban, did he agree – did he think that Hungarian law held primacy over EU law?

He smiled. In fact, he almost laughed. “The fact is very clear that the primacy of EU law is not in the treaty at all. So the EU has primacy where it has competences. The question is about the competences.

“What’s going on here is that – regularly – European Institutions circumvent the rights of the national parliament and government and modify the treaty without having any legitimate authority to do so. So the Polish are right.”

He told me there was no schism between the east and west of Europe, but rather “between common sense and non-common sense”. With a shrug, he declared that the idea of levying sanctions against Poland was “ridiculous”.

So we are heading for a proper row. Is it worth it – the EU going into a political battle with one of its own members? It’s a question I put to the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.

“I think we have to be tough but I think the question is how do you get there,” he told me. “My argument will be that the independence of the Polish judiciary is the key issue which we have to discuss and we have to settle.

“Poland has to take the necessary steps – that is non-negotiable. This has to do with the foundations of our democracy in this part of the world. So here we cannot negotiate.”

Of course, the EU has plenty of form at creating a crisis, only to then come up with a way to solve it. But this doesn’t feel stage-managed. It feels awkward and painful – the Germans, for instance, don’t seem to want to interfere, but nor do they want to be seen as too passive.

But Poland has popped up repeatedly in recent missives from Brussels. Its border with Belarus has been the site for migrants being pushed towards Europe by President Lukashenko, only to be stopped in their tracks by the Polish police.

Its rules on LGBTQ+ rights have been widely criticised, as have the country’s laws on equality.

And, just like Mr Orban, Poland’s prime minister seems to see political capital in having a row with other EU leaders (especially ones from the west) while retaining the financial advantages of EU membership.

So this won’t end with Poland leaving, or being dismissed from the club. But we may be heading for an almighty row, that leads to… we don’t know where.

World

Bodies of three Israeli hostages killed at music festival recovered in Gaza

Published

6 hours ago

May 18, 2024

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Bodies of three Israeli hostages killed at music festival recovered in Gaza

The bodies of three Israeli hostage taken by Hamas have been recovered in Gaza.

The remains were discovered in an overnight operation carried out by Israel’s military and intelligence agency Shin Bet, said chief military spokesman Daniel Hagari.

Itzhak Gelerenter, 56, Amit Buskila, 28, and Shani Louk, 22, were killed at the Nova music festival on 7 October, with their bodies then taken into Gaza by Hamas militants.

Ms Louk’s body was seen face-down in a pick-up truck travelling through Gaza in a video that was shared widely on social media after the hostages were taken.

Israel-Gaza war latest updates

“They were celebrating life in the Nova music festival and they were murdered by Hamas,” said Mr Hagari.

He said their families have been notified.

“Our hearts go out to them, to the families at this difficult time. We will leave no stone unturned, we will do everything in our power to find our hostages and bring them home.”

The military did not give immediate details on where their bodies were found.

Ms Louk’s father has said the return of his daughter’s body to her family has been a form of closure.

Nissim Louk told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz his daughter “radiated light, to her and those who surrounded her, and in her death she still does”.

He added: “She is a symbol of the people of Israel, between light and darkness. Her inner and outer beauty that shone for all the world to see is a special one.”

In November, the brother of Ms Louk told Sky News of their last phone call as his sister tried to escape Hamas.

Speaking about the video that was circulated online after she was taken, Amit Louk said: “I never thought I was going to be in contact with this type of video, seeing my sister in that brutal position.

“And just in that moment, the whole family just crashed.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deaths “heartbreaking”, saying: “We will return all of our hostages, both the living and the dead.”

Meanwhile, Professor Hagai Levine, a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, has said the recovery of the bodies is a “painful reminder” of those who are still in captivity.

“We do not lose hope. We are preparing for the return of the hostages that are alive,” he added.

Israel has been operating in the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah, where it says it has intelligence that hostages are being held.

Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and abducted around 250 others in the 7 October attack.

Around half of those have since been freed, most in swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during a ceasefire in November.

Israel says around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of around 30 more.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza since the attack has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

Mr Netanyahu has vowed to both eliminate Hamas and bring all the hostages back.

He faces pressure to resign, and the US has threatened to scale back its support over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Israelis are divided into two main camps: those who want the government to put the war on hold and free the hostages, and others who think the hostages are an unfortunate price to pay for eradicating Hamas.

World

Slovakia PM shooting: Friend of suspect recalls laughing with him just days before assassination attempt

Published

9 hours ago

May 17, 2024

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Slovakia PM shooting: Friend of suspect recalls laughing with him just days before assassination attempt

Mile L’Udovit is leaning on the front door of his apartment block when we meet, just as he has done so often since moving in four decades ago.

He was one of the original tenants of the tatty building and so was his dear friend Juraj Cintula – the man charged with trying to kill Slovakia’s prime minister.

Mile is at once shocked, bemused, appalled and bewildered.

“He’s a good friend,” he tells me. Both men are 71 years old and talked often. “He was a decent, polite man. A good worker. His wife is a professor and his kids were okay. He had a good reputation. Everything was okay.

“Nobody expected something like this to happen. No one could imagine it. That’s the worst thing about it.

“I spoke to him on Monday and we were having a laugh, like neighbours do. It’s so unpleasant.”

He shakes his head and gestures up to Cintula’s apartment on the top of the building. “He will either die or get a life sentence. It’s going to be so hard for his family.”

Cintula has not yet been officially identified as the suspect, but it’s common knowledge in Slovakia.

Armed police even brought him back to the apartment, dressed in a bulletproof jacket and helmet, to help gather evidence. So why, I ask Mile, did his old friend allegedly try to kill Robert Fico?

“You know, I can’t really say,” he replies thoughtfully. “We took politics as something to laugh at. But we kept our own opinions – he had his, I had mine.

“He was opposed to certain acts of the government and his opinions were quite different. But what was in his mind? Really, nobody knows.”

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Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico has second surgery in two days after assassination attempt leaves him in ‘very serious’ condition

Published

9 hours ago

May 17, 2024

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Slovakia's PM Robert Fico has second surgery in two days after assassination attempt leaves him in 'very serious' condition

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico has had a second surgery in two days after being shot multiple times in Europe’s first assassination attempt in more than 20 years.

The 59-year-old was shot multiple times while greeting supporters in the former mining town of Handlova on Wednesday. A man has been arrested over the shooting.

Mr Fico was left with life-threatening injuries, and while his condition improved the president-elect of Slovakia said he escaped death “by just a hair”.

He is currently recovering at the University FD Roosevelt Hospital in Banska Bystrica, and underwent a second surgery to remove dead tissue inside of his body.

Hospital director Miriam Lapunikova said he underwent a CT scan and is currently awake and stable in an intensive care unit, but added his condition is still “very serious”.

Deputy prime minister Robert Kaliniak also told reporters: “I think it will take several more days until we will definitely know the direction of the further development.”

While Mr Fico continued to recover from the attack – the first assassination attempt of a European political leader for more than 20 years – police brought the suspect to his home while they searched it.

Markiza, a Slovakian television station, showed footage of the suspect accompanied by police in the town of Levice and reported police had seized a computer and some documents.

He was then escorted out and back into the police car.

The suspect was previously named as 71-year-old Juraj Cintula. He is said to be a writer and poet.

President-elect Peter Pellegrini said on Thursday that the prime minister is living “the worst hours and days of his life” after the shooting.

If the “gunshot wounds were just a few millimetres either side, we would be talking about him as the late prime minister”, he said.

Mr Fico has long been a divisive figure. His return to power last year on a pro-Russian, anti-American ticket led to worries among fellow EU and NATO members that he would turn his country further away from the Western mainstream.

Under his stewardship, the government has halted arms deliveries to Ukraine, and his opponents worry he will lead Slovakia in the footsteps of Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

Thousands have repeatedly rallied in the capital and across Slovakia to protest against Mr Fico’s policies.