A Polish E.U. Leader Seeks Middle Ground in a Dispute With Poland
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Version 0 of 1. BRUSSELS — As president of the European Council — the group representing the European Union’s often-clashing 28 leaders — Donald Tusk is forever promoting a balance between national sovereignty on one hand and common values and goals on the other. On Monday, his challenge was especially personal. Mr. Tusk is a former prime minister of Poland and a former leader of the center-right Civic Platform party, which was voted out of power last year and replaced by the right-wing Law and Justice party. Visiting him in Brussels was President Andrzej Duda of Poland, who was there to discuss issues that included a European Commission investigation begun last week into whether Mr. Duda’s new government in Warsaw poses a threat to free expression and an independent judiciary. Speaking at a news conference with Mr. Duda, Mr. Tusk tried to find middle ground. He suggested that the commission, the European Union’s executive agency in Brussels, may have been too quick to begin the investigation in the wake of a controversy over moves by the Polish government to pack the judiciary with its appointees and take control of the state broadcasting system. He reassured Mr. Duda that there was no conspiracy against Warsaw by officials in Brussels. He said some of the criticism of Poland had been overdone, and that Standard & Poor’s, the ratings agency, had miscalculated in downgrading the country’s long-term foreign currency credit rating. The “bad narrative” about Poland had gone too far, he said. “If somebody uses too-strong words or takes actions that do not entirely match the Western European community of values,” that person “has to be ready for a strong reaction,” Mr. Tusk said. “However, this reaction cannot be hysterical.” At the same time, Mr. Tusk invoked “Star Wars” imagery to warn Mr. Duda about allowing Poland to go too far down a path toward authoritarian rule. “We were talking about going back to the light side of Europe and going out of this dark politics imposed on us by a foreign state,” said Mr. Tusk, recalling a campaign by Polish trade unions three decades ago that helped weaken the Soviet Union. “We need to protect this historical event that was us joining the light side,” said Mr. Tusk, adding in an aside to Mr. Duda that he was alluding to “science fiction” movies both had probably seen. “I want to tell you in this context that there is always time to move to the light side of the Force,” said Mr. Tusk, again apparently addressing Mr. Duda. That, Mr. Tusk said, had been the pattern of “Polish history in recent decades.” Mr. Duda, who took office in November, reiterated that “media creations” had misrepresented his government’s intentions, and he warned against “unnecessary” criticism. The changes in Poland were part of a normal sequence of events after an election and change of government, Mr. Duda said. Treading a fine line between criticizing the government in Warsaw while protecting the country from more scrutiny, Mr. Tusk said that no formal debate on the state of democracy was needed at the level of European Union leaders at their next summit meeting in Brussels, where the main topic would be reaching a deal with Prime Minister David Cameron on Britain’s future in the bloc. Aleksander Smolar, president of the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw, which promotes civic issues, said that the tension was tempered by the otherwise conciliatory tone taken by Mr. Tusk and Mr. Duda. “President Duda said that Poland has greatly benefited from being a member of the E.U. — quite an unusual statement for a politician from Law and Justice — whereas Mr. Tusk distanced himself from the decision of the European Commission to check if Poland violates the union’s laws,” Mr. Smolar said. On the other hand, Mr. Smolar said, Mr. Tusk did stress that concerns in Brussels about Poland are justified. “With his reference to ‘Star Wars,’ he suggested that Poland has crossed over to the dark side,” Mr. Smolar said. “But his ironic comments were not confrontational. They were rather little digs at President Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, designed to let everyone know that despite Mr. Tusk’s conciliatory tone, he is still very much aware of the real problems with the current government.” Mr. Kaczynski is the leader of Law and Justice. Janusz Reiter, a former ambassador and the founder of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, said Law and Justice and Mr. Duda had started a campaign to ease the tension between Poland and the European Commission. In the last couple of days, Mr. Duda and other Law and Justice officials in Brussels have written articles in which they have argued that democracy in Poland is not in any danger. Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who, like Mr. Duda, is a member of Law and Justice, will go to Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday to defend her government’s recent actions before the European Parliament. “It’s an attempt at de-escalation of this conflict after some matters have been blown out of proportions,” Mr. Reiter said. “It’s not the beginning of love but rather a realization that, as things stand today, it will not be possible to resolve this conflict in a way that would benefit anyone.” Both of the biggest television channels in Poland — one government-controlled, the other private — mostly stressed the positive and conciliatory outcome of the meeting, though Mr. Tusk’s pointed, ironic comments did not go unnoticed. In its coverage of the meeting, Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the country’s leading newspapers and a supporter of the previous government, said Mr. Tusk had done as much as he could under the circumstances to telegraph his disapproval of some of the new government’s early moves. “During the press conference, the president of the European Council was as harsh as the convention and his office allowed him,” the paper said. However, the bulk of the story concentrated on how Mr. Tusk and Mr. Duda seemed eager to cool tensions and find some middle ground, appealing to officials in both Warsaw and Brussels to avoid further confrontation. |