The Polish ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) slammed Manfred Weber for his ‘firewall’ comment, accusing his European People’s Party of attempting to interfere with the elections scheduled in Poland for the autumn.
Weber spoke on the EPP’s potential cooperation with the European Conservatives and Reformists. He named a pro-European, pro-Ukrainian and pro-rule-of-law stance prerequisite of any collaboration, citing the need to build “a firewall” against the PiS party during an interview with Frankfurter Allgemaine Zeitung.
“We are the only force able to replace PiS in Poland and re-introduce the country to Europe,” he said, as quoted by PiS, in reference to the chances of the centre-liberal Civic Coalition (KO, EPP), the largest opposition force in Poland, in the national elections that will take place in autumn.
His comment sparked outrage among the PiS members, with party spokesman Piotr Müller accusing the EPP of exerting political pressure on the EU institutions to influence the elections’ results in Poland.
German politicians would like PiS to lose power, given the party’s “assertive” position towards the agenda “imposed on the European institutions” by Berlin, he told a press briefing, citing PiS’ demands of war reparations that Germany rejects.
“An independent Poland ruled by PiS or German domination,” tweeted PiS MEP, ex-prime minister Beata Szydło, thanking “Herr Webber” for clarifying who the Polish people should vote for.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki shared a meme comparing Weber to his predecessor in the EPP head’s position, Donald Tusk, now KO’s leader and PiS’ longtime main political adversary, asking the readers to “draw conclusions” from Weber’s “outrageous” statement.
Some PiS politicians took Weber’s words out of context, according to the pro-opposition private TVN24 broadcaster, which insisted that Weber did not mean his national government as the force capable of replacing PiS, but the EPP party he heads.
Anti-German resentments and attacking Tusk as an alleged Berlin agent in Poland are some of the main themes in PiS’s campaign for the elections, in which it hopes to secure its third consecutive term in power.
The party is currently leading with support from 32.7% of Poles, although KO is catching up, supported by 30.2%, according to the newest poll by the IBRiS Institute for Rzeczpospolita news outlet.
No cooperation with radicals, Weber says
A potential cooperation between the EPP and ECR became a widely-discussed topic a few months ago, with ECR’s Vice President Zdzisław Krasnodębski telling EURACTIV.pl earlier this year he saw room for the two parties to collaborate in some way.
In the interview for FAZ, Weber also commented on European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen’s reported ambitions to replace Weber at the helm of the EPP in the next term, calling her “embodiment” of the party’s “centrist and European” identity.
Speaking on the EPP’s determination to be the strongest EU group, he expressed hope for the party’s members to win in Spanish elections and called “citizenship and unionising” more attractive for the people than “leftist ideologists.”
Asking if this meant the party’s turning right, he opted for a direction that “excludes radicals,” referring to Alternative for Germany (AfD) and French Marine Le Pen as EPP’s adversaries.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | EURACTIV.pl)
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