Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party is trying to rewrite history — and it’s hurting Polish relations with the rest of Europe. (more…)
Tag: Central Europe
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Nationalism May Be Down, But It’s Not Out
Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Donald Trump of the United States meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, May 16, 2017 (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey) Nationalism may be down, but it’s not out, reports The Wall Street Journal.
The nationalist insurgency is both growing and metamorphosing. It is not just eating away at relations between countries on issues such as free trade; it is also eroding the institutions and norms that prevail within countries.
With economies growing on both sides of the Atlantic, populists now draw on cultural grievances to undermine the stable, rules-based environment businesses crave. (more…)
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Polish Ruling Party Forces Through Reforms to Defang Supreme Court
Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party is forcing through judicial reforms that the Supreme Court’s president, Małgorzata Gesdorf, has said would “end” the Supreme Court and “break” the Constitution.
The changes are expected to be enacted next week after a parliamentary committee voted for the legislation on Thursday.
During a hearing, lawmakers from the ruling party rejected all amendments from the opposition, refused to hear independent legal counsel and ignored warnings from parliament’s own lawyers, who said the reforms might be unconstitutional.
Grzegorz Schetyna, the leader of the opposition Civic Platform, has called for demonstrations in the streets.
“This is no longer a creeping coup,” he told Polish television. “This coup begins to strike.” (more…)
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How Law and Justice Stays Popular in Poland
Remi Adekoya explains in Foreign Affairs how Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has been able to remain popular despite truncating democratic norms and institutions and antagonizing the EU:
- It has raised social spending, specifically for poor rural families with children.
- It portrays its domestic opponents as corrupt elites fighting to preserve their influence.
- It portrays its European critics as fanatical multiculturalists and militant secularists who are so obsessed with political correctness they have lost all sense of self-preservation. (more…)
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Macron Wins Central European Support for Posted-Workers Reform
Austrian chancellor Christian Kern and French president Emmanuel Macron visit Salzburg, August 23 (BKA/Andy Wenzel) French president Emmanuel Macron has won support from the leaders of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia for reform of the EU’s posted-workers regime.
“We are prepared work with all our partners on a technical level to agree an adjustment of the Posted Workers Directive so that we can overcome the split in the EU,” Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka said following a four-nation summit in Salzburg.
Robert Fico, his Slovak counterpart, suggested a deal could be reached by October. (more…)
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Duda Hasn’t Stopped Law and Justice from Subjugating Poland’s Courts
Polish president Andrzej Duda answers questions from reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, January 18, 2016 (NATO) Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has surprised observers by vetoing legislation from his own Law and Justice party that would have defanged the judiciary.
Closer scrutiny suggests Duda’s opposition is less meaningful than it is made out to be, though.
The president has said he will sign the bills if they are amended and Leonid Bershidsky argues at Bloomberg View that his proposed changes don’t deviate from the legislation’s objective: “to put the judiciary, which the party argues has turned into an elitist caste, under more political control.” (more…)
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Poland’s Ruling Nationalist Party Steps Up Assault on Judiciary
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party pushed through more changes to the court system on Wednesday:
- One bill takes power to appoint members to the National Judicial Council, which is responsible for appointing lower-level judges, away from the judiciary itself and gives it to parliament, where Law and Justice has a majority.
- The same law removes fifteen of the 25 judges currently serving on the National Judicial Council.
- A second bill gives the justice minister the power to unilaterally replace court presidents. (more…)
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EU Threatens Sanctions Against Central European States
Skyline of Budapest, Hungary (Unsplash/Tom Bixler) The European Union is clamping down on its recalcitrant Central European member states.
The European Commission has opened what is called an infringement procedure against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland for failing to take in their share of refugees.
This comes on the heels of several probes into Hungary’s and Poland’s right-wing governments.
EU countries committed to distributing 160,000 asylum seekers across the bloc in 2015 to ease the burden on Southern European member states. The Central Europeans have refused to do their bit.
The Czech Republic was only expected to house 2,691 people, Hungary 1,294 and Poland 6,182 — at a time when countries like Germany and Sweden sheltered hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
Yet even those token amounts were apparently too much. (more…)
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Recalcitrant Hungary and Poland Exhaust Europe’s Patience
President Jean-Claude Juncker and other members of the European Commission listen to a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, September 14, 2016 (European Parliament) The European Parliament has opened an investigation into the state of democracy and rule of law in Hungary, which is ruled by the self-described illiberal democrat Viktor Orbán.
The resolution, introduced by liberal and left-wing groups, passed on Wednesday with the support of 68 members of the conservative European People’s Party, to which Orbán’s Fidesz belongs.
The mainstream right has long shielded Budapest from scrutiny, despite Orbán’s years of attacks on the courts, the central bank and the media, the removal of checks on his parliamentary majority and his pursuing of economic and migration policies that defy the European mainstream.
At the same time, it has repeatedly warned Orbán to keep his anti-EU rhetoric and authoritarian tendencies in check; warnings that have gone unheeded. (more…)
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Poland’s Opposition to Multispeed Europe Is Ill-Considered
Poland’s ruling party has come out against a proposal for more flexible integration in Europe that is supported by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
“We cannot accept any announcements of a two-speed Europe,” Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of the conservative Law and Justice party, told the weekly W Sieci.
This would mean either pushing us out of the European Union or downgrading us to an inferior category of members.
This is hyperbole.
The whole idea of a multispeed Europe, as endorsed by the “Big Four” earlier this month, is to break through the false dichotomy of more or less Europe. It would allow countries to integrate at not just one or two but many speeds.
For example, countries that wish to pool their defense procurement could do so within the context of the EU without militarizing the union as a whole, which is something Poland opposes. (more…)
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Brexit and Trump Force Poles to Shelve Suspicions of Germany
Skyline of Berlin, Germany, December 31, 2005 (Max Braun) The first thing Poland’s Law and Justice party did when it returned to power a year ago was pick a fight with Germany.
Jarosław Kaczyński’s national-conservative party, which controls both the presidency and parliament, has yet to forgive Germany for what it did to Poland seventy years ago.
When Martin Schulz, then president of the European Parliament, accused the Poles of hypocrisy for expecting European solidarity in the face of Russian threats but refusing to help the rest of Europe cope with a refugee crisis, Mariusz Błaszczak, the interior minister, felt it necessary to invoke World War II. He called Schulz’ comments “another example of German arrogance” and pointed out, “We are talking in Warsaw. Warsaw was destroyed by the Germans.”
Now the prospect of Schulz coming to power in Berlin has Błaszczak’s party scrambling to repair Polish relations with his rival, Angela Merkel. (more…)
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Blue-Red Culture War in the Alps
Hohenwerfen Castle in the Salzach valley of Austria, August 14, 2015 (Daniel Parks) Die Presse, Austria’s center-right newspaper, reports that many of the cleavages of what the Atlantic Sentinel calls Europe’s blue-red culture war appeared in the Alpine nation’s presidential election on Sunday.
Norbert Hofer, the nationalist Freedom Party candidate, was more popular with men and workers without a college education. Alexander Van der Bellen, a former Green party leader who rallied the Austrian mainstream behind his candidacy, received more votes from women and college graduates.
Similar divides came to light in the American presidential election last month, although there the outcome was reversed: Donald Trump, Norbert’s Republican counterpart, defeated Hillary Clinton, a center-left pragmatists not unlike Van der Bellen.
How do we heal these divisions? (more…)
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Van der Bellen’s Victory Sends Message to Other Countries
Alexander Van der Bellen told a news conference on Sunday night he will be an “openminded, liberal-minded and above all a pro-European president” of Austria, adding that his triumph over the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer sent a “message to the capitals of the EU that one can win elections with high European positions.”
Clearly — but this is no time for those of us who are openminded, liberal-minded and pro-European to get complacent.
Van der Bellen nearly lost the first time around, in May, when the result of the election was invalidated because absentee votes had been counted too early.
He only won the second election on Sunday by mobilizing the whole Austrian center and left. (more…)