Enlarge image
The Polish deputy head of government and PiS boss Jarosław Kaczyński
Photo: PAWEL SUPERNAK / EPA
Poland and the European Union (EU) have been fighting over a controversial judicial reform for years.
The Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński sees Germany as the main driving force here - and has accused the government in Berlin of wanting to transform the EU into a »Fourth German Reich«.
There are countries that are "not enthusiastic about the prospect of building a fourth German Reich on the basis of the EU," said the head of the right-wing nationalist ruling party PiS in an interview with the right-wing extremist Polish daily GPC.
The term “Fourth German Reich” was “nothing negative,” said Kaczyński, “because it is not about the Third Reich, but about the First”, that is, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
If the Poles “agreed to such modern submission”, “we would be degraded in various ways”.
Kaczyński also attacked the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which he believes is "the fundamental tool used" to enforce federalist ideas.
"Metaphor" or "joke"
At the beginning of December, Kaczyński had already criticized it with similar words.
"Germany has put the cards on the table and wants to build a fourth Reich," he is said to have said internally at a PiS parliamentary group meeting.
"We will not allow that." PiS politicians replied that these words had served to "mobilize" before important votes and should be understood as a "metaphor" or a "joke".
Now, for the first time, Kaczyński expressed this “metaphor” in public.
During the inaugural visit of the new Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) last week, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki criticized the goal set in the coalition agreement of the traffic light parties to develop the EU into a “federal state”: In Polish ears, this vision sounds like “bureaucratic centralism - that is utopia and dangerous «.
The EU has been at odds with Warsaw since 2017 because of its controversial judicial reform.
The PiS is accused, among other things, of installing judges loyal to the government at the constitutional court and of having set up a disciplinary chamber to discipline critical judges.
The EU Commission had therefore initiated various infringement proceedings, some of which resulted in lawsuits before the ECJ.
mrc / AFP