“This is Poland, not the EU,” says speaker of parliament

“This is Poland, not the EU,” said the speaker of parliament, Elżbieta Witek, a senior figure in the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, in response to opposition protesters at a weekend rally.

Witek also criticised those who complain about the government yet still take the social benefits it had introduced. Her remarks drew widespread commentary, including from those who pointed out that PiS regularly criticises the European Union yet continues to accept EU funds for Poland.

During her speech, which was aimed at promoting the government’s post-pandemic economic reform package, Witek said that the so-called “Polish Deal” (Polski Ład) would allow the country to “catch up with the average living standards of western European societies”.

Witek, who is speaker of the Sejm, the dominant lower house of parliament, saw her speech interrupted by protesters chanting “constitution” and “free courts”, slogans used by critics of the government’s judicial policies, which have caused a conflict with Brussels over the rule of law.

In response, Witek said: “This is Poland, and not the EU. This is Poland…and Poland has always been in Europe, for over 2,000 years.” She added that those chanting were “not from here” and suggested that they had been “paid by someone” to “behave in such a way”.

While PiS vigorously denies opposition claims that it is seeking a “Polexit” from the EU, it has regularly criticised Brussels. In 2018, PiS-backed president Andrzej Duda declared the EU an “imaginary community which is of little relevance to Poles” and told Brussels to “leave us in peace and let us fix Poland”.

Witek also condemned opponents of the government for accepting social benefits, such as its flagship “500+” child benefit programme and its free medicines for seniors, as well as taking advantage of the lower retirement age it introduced.

“You take and complain without any qualms,” she said, quoted by TOK FM. “It is not very honourable, because if I did not agree with the government’s decisions, I would never take anything from such a government.”

The comments drew widespread criticism from opposition politicians. Paweł Kowal, an MP from the centrist Civic Platform (PO), wrote to Witek on Twitter suggesting that “perhaps the government should collect taxes only from those who support it and then divide it among their own?”

“If a citizen complaining about the government does not have – according to Mrs Witek – the right to public money, then Mrs Witek, who complains about the EU, does not have the right to European funds,” tweeted Leszek Miller, a former prime minister and now an MEP for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).

Witek, however, accused her opponents of simply being angry that they have been unable to create a programme to match the Polish Deal.

“I think that more than one government would use the pandemic as a justification to say that we are in a great crisis, we need to tighten our belts and give up something,” she said. Yet the PiS-led government has “managed to maintain over seven million jobs, managed to keep all the social programmes”.

Main image credit: Kancelaria Sejmu/Łukasz Błasikiewicz (under CC BY 2.0)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.