The Sejm and the government stand by their veto on the EU budget: Provisions are incompatible with the treaties

November 20, 2020
12:46 am

- We fight for Poland and the future of the European Union, for a good budget, for a reconstruction program, for principles and values. This is our proposal, which we address to the EU and the entire Polish society. We could have taken an easier path, but we are now swimming against the tide of Brussels' mainstream," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the Sejm on Wednesday.

Poland and Hungary do not accept the agreement reached in early November between the German presidency and the European Parliament on a mechanism linking access to EU funds to the rule of law. The head of government argued that Europe is great when it is a Europe of homelands. When it can take care of transatlantic values, build a common market - this is the Europe, which was created by its Christian founding fathers. The European Union means equality of states before the law and the value of observing treaties, and not the creation of regulations that circumvent the treaties. It cannot be a Union of double standards, a Union of equals and equals!

- Today we are facing a fundamental choice: whether we will defend the true European values that underpin its existence," Morawiecki said.

During Thursday's European Council, the Prime Minister reiterated Poland's negative stance on the introduction of arbitrary and biased criteria conditioning the spending of budget funds.

On the same day, the Sejm passed a resolution supporting Poland's veto of the EU budget. It called on the governments of all EU member states and EU bodies to return to talks and reach an agreement in accordance with the EU Treaties and European Council conclusions.

For years, Law and Justice has consistently sought to level the Polish playing field in the EU. Already in 2016, at a meeting of EU heads of parliament in Luxembourg, the Speaker of the Sejm Marek Kuchciński presented a project for a Europe of Solidary States - the concept of the EU as an organization of sovereign nation states.

In January 2018, he argued that we all need a stronger Europe. However, we should derive this strength from healthy interstate relations, respect for national differences, cultural diversities and political distinctiveness. Not states, but strong states, nations, can build a competitive, safe and wise European Union.

Marek Kuchciński also drew attention to the issue of unequal treatment of member states and unfounded accusations against Poland for not respecting the rule of law in April 2019. During the Conference of Speakers of EU Parliaments in Vienna, he said that the disappearance of the functioning of the law in the Union is worrying. This is because we are dealing with unequal treatment of member states. The Union is based on the treaties and the principle of subsidiarity. The treaties define competences of countries and EU institutions, and this limit is violated by the EU and this is a problem. Today we are observing different treatment of the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and later from the so-called old Member States. An example is the judiciary, whose organization is - according to the Lisbon Treaty - an internal competence of the member states. If a judicial institution exists in one country, it also has the right to exist and operate on similar principles in another.

- Poles wanted this reform because pathologies had been growing in Polish courts for years due to the lack of a real balance of power and the consequences of totalitarianism. A democratic state cannot function well with a defective justice system," said Marek Kuchciński.