2020-12-16 11:13 update: 2020-12-16, 21:22
The leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński. Fot. PAP/Leszek Szymański
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party and deputy prime minister, has said no amount of money can buy Poland’s sovereignty.
The party leader, often regarded as the most powerful politician in Poland, made the comment in an interview for the right-wing newspaper Gazeta Polska, in which he defended his government’s position on the new EU budget.
Poland had threatened to veto the budget unless a mechanism making funding conditional on respect for the rule of law was dropped or modified.
"There is no amount of money for which one would give up sovereignty," Kaczynski told the paper on Wednesday.
In his opinion, Poland had managed to safeguard its freedoms during the negotiations while obtaining records amounts of funding at the same time.
EU leaders reached a deal on Thursday on the bloc’s next budget, which comes with a pandemic recovery fund. After strong opposition from Poland, the bloc agreed to limit the conditionality mechanism.
The mechanism will now only safeguard the EU budget from fraud and corruption. A country violating the rule of law may not now face a cut in funding from Brussels.
"We were and we are determined to defend our sovereignty,” said Kaczynski. “We will not agree to impose measures on Poland that are contrary to our culture and tradition, to subordinate our country to the main EU players. Nothing has changed and will not change in this matter. That is why we negotiated hard and demanded very precise provisions to protect our freedom."
He added that Poland had been ready to "follow the path of disagreement over the budget."
"We were prepared not to join the recovery fund, but only if the outcome of the negotiations was unfavourable and carried a high risk to our country's sovereignty," he said.
The head of Law and Justice also said that as long as his party rules, Poland's position will always be defended in a "tough" but "rational and intelligent" way.
"We have no complexes, we are not some inferior part of the EU,” he added. “We are a fully-fledged, big, strong member state and no one will bring us down to the ground floor. Poles are to be respected in the community in the same way as the Germans and the French." he added. (PAP)
