6 minute read
Money From Brussels In Serious Danger
MONEY FROM BRUSSELS
IN SERIOUS DANGER
Negotiations on the disbursement of money from the Reconstruction Fund are dragging on in Brussels. Representatives of the European Commission are bringing the issue of the primacy of European Union law in Poland to a head.
Brussels has admitted outright that it is blocking the payment of billions of euros to Poland. Paolo Gentiloni, the EU commissioner for economic affairs, attended an MEP hearing on the Reconstruction Fund and the state of implementation of National Recovery Plans (NRPs) in individual EU countries. Asked about the reasons for the protracted negotiations with Poland on its draft NRP submitted at the beginning of May, Gentiloni explained that the ongoing discussions concern, “as the Polish authorities are well aware,” the question of the supremacy of EU law and the possible consequences of this matter on the Polish NRP.
European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis added that the funds will not be released until Brussels says Poland has met European requirements.
The sums in question are to play a key role in the return of the Polish economy onto a path of stable growth, according to statements by representatives of the Polish authorities headed by the prime minister. The money at stake is 57 billion euros.
It is therefore not surprising that the words of the EU commissioners caused a violent reaction of the most important Polish politicians from the ruling camp.
“No one will lecture us on what democracy and the rule of law are, because Poland has a very long and noble history of fighting all kinds of totalitarianisms and despots,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Facebook.
“We fought for the rule of law and democracy during the terrible years of communism, but we have a much longer tradition of democracy and we don’t want to be lectured by anyone from Western Europe about what democracy is, what the rule of law is, because we know it best,” reads the prime minister’s post.
“Such an aggressive, pushy and blackmailing demand to disregard the order of the Constitutional Tribunal from 2011 and to thereby violate the Polish Constitution in a deliberate manner, and to make it a condition for the payment of the
European funds due to us, is an absolute scandal as far as the action of a European official is concerned. He said something, clearly without thinking first. This happens. Sometimes people say the wrong thing,” commented Zbigniew Ziobro, Poland’s minister of justice. “I hope that the European Commission will back down and apologize,” he added.
“The commissioner has undoubtedly overstepped his remit,” Zbigniew Kuźmiuk, MEP from the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), commented on Poland’s public television channel TVP, adding that his information suggests that European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was said to be astonished by Gentiloni’s statement.
“The procedure for adopting the NRP has no connection with other EU procedures. The EC has not taken any decision to reject the NRP or suspend the measures. Paolo Gentiloni only expressed the obvious position of respecting EU law. The resulting media messages are an overinterpretation of these words,” said Waldemar Buda, deputy minister in the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy.
The Polish government hopes the EC will approve Poland’s NRP in September, Buda added. Government spokes-
person Piotr Muller also expressed his hope for approval of the NRP in September, claiming that the process is dragging on due to red tape.
Representatives of the Polish opposition warn that the United Right’s government is pursuing an extremely risky policy that could result in the temporary loss of colossal funds, without which Poland would inevitably face a serious economic crisis.
“[PiS leader] Jarosław Kaczyński’s irresponsible and foolish policy is causing dramatic damage to Poland and all Poles ... Today the European Union is withholding billions of euros in aid that our country needs like oxygen. It is withholding it only because PiS is destroying the Polish rule of law and the European legal order,” assessed Donald Tusk, leader of the Civic Platform (PO) and former long-time prime minister.
“Poland once missed out on the Marshall Plan because we were a lawless country ruled authoritatively by communists. Instead of Western aid, the Soviet order was established. Today things are becoming similar,” the former prime minister noted. “This can still be fixed. Stop thinking about how to cover your own helplessness with a state of emergency [on the Polish-Belarusian border], chaos provoked at the border and by sowing fear, but immediately stop ruining the Polish constitutional order and the stupid war with the West,” Tusk said.
According to him, “all Poles are paying for Kaczyński’s obsessions today.” “We must stop this sleepwalking march at all costs. There is still time,” the PO leader underlined.
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, former Polish deputy prime minister and later EU commissioner for internal market and services, also spoke about the gravity of the situation. She said that the time for admonishments and warnings from Brussels is finally coming to an end and that serious financial penalties should be expected as Poland violates the rule of law.
“We can’t take risks, play some kind of weird game; this is money that is supposed to enable us to rebuild our economy after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis,” said Hanna Gil-Piątek of the Poland 2050 party, which is new on the political scene.
Poland is to receive 23.9 billion euros in grants and 12.1 billion euros in low-cost loans under the Reconstruction Fund. The government can apply for another 22 billion euros in loans until 2023.
National Reconstruction Plans, once agreed with the European Commission, must be approved by 27 finance ministers, for which a majority vote in the EU Council is sufficient.
Poland submitted a draft of its NRP to Brussels in early May, but Morawiecki’s government asked the Commission to wait up to four weeks before starting its official assessment of the plan, during which time it can still be amended in a “technical dialogue” with Brussels. Brussels only confirmed in the second half of May that the standard two months for assessing Poland’s plan had been extended to three, which expired on August 1.
The National Reconstruction Plan was already negotiated in mid-July and its translation into the legal language of an “executive decision” of the EU Council was just finishing. However, a “let’s not rush” order came to the Secretariat-General of the European Commission - after the decision of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal challenging the supremacy of EU law in Poland (on the issue of interim measures in the judicial field) and after the unfreezing of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court in defiance of the new Court of Justice of the European Union safeguard decision.
The Disciplinary Chamber has been partially frozen, but Poland has still not fully complied with the CJEU’s decisions. Additionally, in September the Constitutional Tribunal intends to continue hearing a motion filed by the prime minister seeking to broadly undermine the CJEU’s powers on judicial issues.
Morawiecki has stated that he does not intend to withdraw his request to the Constitutional Tribunal to consider the supremacy of Polish law over EU law.
Paolo Gentiloni, EU commissioner for economic affairs
