The leader of the Polish national populist power, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accused Germany of trying to transform the European Union into a
federalist
"
Fourth German Reich
", in an interview published Friday, December 24.
There are countries that "
are not enthusiastic about the prospect of building a German Fourth Reich on the basis of the EU,
" the president of the Law and Justice (PiS) party told the far-right Polish daily GPC.
Read also Poland still in conflict with Germany over the issue of war reparations
According to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is also Deputy Prime Minister in charge of National Security, the term of the Fourth German Reich "
has nothing negative, not with regard to the Third Reich (nazi, editor's note) but of the first
", therefore of the Holy Roman Empire.
During the recent visit of the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Poland, his Polish counterpart described as "
utopian and therefore dangerous
" the support of the German coalition government for greater federalism in the European Union.
Mateusz Morawiecki occasionally recalled the concept of a “
Europe of sovereign nations
”, defended by the Polish authorities.
CJEU "usurping conclusions"
According to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, widely regarded as "
the mastermind
" of any major change in Poland, "
if we Poles agreed to such modern submission we would be degraded in different ways
."
And to attack the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) which, according to him, is “
the basic instrument used
” to impose the federating ideas.
The CJEU “
can interpret European law and draw downright usurping conclusions.
And it does,
”Jaroslaw Kaczynski said.
Brussels is engaged in a long and deep standoff with Warsaw, in particular over the judicial reforms launched by the PiS in power since 2015. These reforms, accused of undermining the independence of judges, have earned Poland several convictions by the CJEU.
Under the influence of national populists, the Polish Constitutional Court already in June challenged the authority of the Court of Justice of the EU, and, in October, questioned the primacy of European law over Polish law.
Read also Poland: how the model student became one of the black sheep of Europe
On Wednesday, Brussels launched an infringement procedure against Poland following these judgments of the Constitutional Court, stressing that the latter "
no longer meets the requirements of an independent and impartial tribunal established by law, as required by the
Constitutional Court.
treated
”.