Poland’s prime minister has condemned Germany for “lecturing us about democracy”, which he says is being done to distract attention from the failure of Berlin’s energy policy. He warned that his Law and Justice (PiS) government will not allow Germans to “spit in our face”.
During a speech in Brańsk, a town in eastern Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki declared that “we are the victims of this [energy] policy, Putin’s policy together with the German government. They need to be reminded of this, because their climate policy is in ruins, it is a great failure, a failure of the German government”.
“And they are shamefully trying to change the subject today,” the prime minister added. “We have had enough of this lecturing from Germany, enough of being lectured on what democracy is, what the rule of law is.”
Poland was “one of the first states in the world that built democracy”, he declared, noting that its parliament, the Sejm, traces its roots back to the 15th century.
Morawiecki then immediately recalled how a few years ago the German drama series Generation War was broadcast. The show, which was set in the Nazi era, caused outrage in Poland over the depiction of Polish underground Home Army (AK) soldiers – who fought against the German occupation – as antisemitic.
“What insolence to show the AK in a bad light, our most sacred heroes, who fought for freedom,” said Morawiecki in Brańsk. “They [the Nazi Germans] – these torturers, criminals – should be condemned, and their grandchildren have the audacity to make such a film.”
“Now less is said about this film, but that it because the Law and Justice government does not allow and will allow itself to be spat at in the face,” he added.
His phrase echoes one used in a famous poem and song by Polish writer and independence activist Maria Konopnicka, which was written in 1908, at a time when part of Polish territory was under German rule. “No German will spit in our face,” goes one line of her work Rota.
Poland’s PiS government has long criticised Germany’s reliance on Russian energy resources, and in particular its Nord Stream gas pipelines. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Warsaw has argued that its concerns have been fully vindicated.
In recent weeks, figures from Poland’s ruling camp have stepped up their anti-German rhetoric, with PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński warning of a “German-Russian plan to rule over Europe” and accusing the domestic opposition of working as a fifth column to “enslave Poland”.
They have suggested that the EU’s concerns over the rule of law in Poland are simply part of political efforts to oust the Polish government. During a speech last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz backed tough action from the EU to enforce the rule of law, mentioning Poland and Hungary specifically.
PiS also announced last week that it would be seeking war reparations from Germany to cover an estimated $1.3 trillion in losses caused by the occupation of 1939 to 1945.
Main photo credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
