Bill to “end electoral privilege of German minority” submitted by party in Poland’s ruling coalition

One of the parties in Poland’s ruling coalition has submitted a bill to end the arrangement under which the country’s German minority receives a seat in parliament. It also wants to eliminate state funding for teaching German to children from the minority.

United Poland (Solidarna Polska) – a hard-right junior partner to the main national-conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party – argues that the rules are an “unjustified electoral privilege” and “brazen violation of the rule of law by the Germans”.

However, the MP who represents Poland’s German minority – which numbers around 148,000 – points out that there is actually no specific electoral privilege for his group. He accuses the ruling camp of seeking to stir “anti-German and anti-minority” sentiment.

“Today MPs from United Poland submitted an important bill to eliminate the completely unjustified electoral privilege of the German minority in Poland,” announced Janusz Kowalski, a deputy agriculture minister, yesterday.

“In our opinion, this privilege violates the constitution, violates equality before the law,” he added, quoted by the 300Polityka news service. “The constitution makes clear that there is no division based on ethnicity when it comes to the voting power of a Polish citizen.”

“There can be no consent for the fact that in the EU the rule of law, which the Germans talk about so often, should be so brazenly violated by the Germans,” concluded Kowalski, who made the announcement alongside United Poland colleague and deputy climate minister Jacek Ozdoba.

Kowalski also argued that the bill was part of attempts to “restore Polish-German symmetry”. He said that “in Germany there is no privilege for the Polish minority. There is even no funding for learning Polish”. Such arguments were used to justify cuts earlier this year to funding for German teaching in Poland.

However, a German government official pointed out that, while the federal government does indeed not provide such funding, that is because education is administered by individual states. They together spend around €200 million annually on teaching Polish to almost 15,000 students.

Nevertheless, Kowalski announced yesterday that he had submitted an amendment removing a further 119 million zloty from next year’s state budget for teaching German to children from the German minority, reports news outlet Wirtualna Polska.

“The German standard is zero euros for the Polish language in German schools, so in our opinion the Polish standard will also be zero zlotys,” said the deputy minister. “We want to use this money for the Polish community, for Poles discriminated against in Germany and other countries.”

“These are fair solutions,” added Ozdoba. “Poland can no longer tolerate a situation where in Germany Poles are treated as some kind of immigrants, and in Poland a [German] minority is being financed. Moreover, a German MP sits in the parliament…[but] there are no Poles in the German parliament.”

Poland’s German minority consists largely of ethnic Germans living in areas that before World War Two were part of Germany but were transferred to Poland during postwar border changes. There are around two million people of Polish origin in Germany, including recent immigrants but also others with deeper roots.

The member of parliament who represents the German minority, Ryszard Galla, however, told news outlet Interia that United Poland’s politicians were misrepresenting the situation.

He noted that there is no specific electoral privilege for the German minority, but rather a general provision that exempts electoral committees representing recognised ethnic minorities from the normal requirement of needing to receive at least 5% of votes nationwide to enter parliament.

“This is not a privilege only for the German minority, although it is our minority that effectively uses it,” said Galla, who warned that there is “clear anti-German and anti-minority rhetoric in the ruling camp”.

Earlier this month, broadcaster Deutsch Welle (DW) reported that the draft for next year’s German federal budget for the first time includes money for the teaching of Polish. DW said that the move was a response to demands made by the Polish government.

This year has seen Poland’s ruling coalition ramp up its criticism of Germany in a number of areas, including over the rule-of-law clash between Warsaw and Brussels and over support for Ukraine.

Main image credit: MICHAL GROCHOLSKI / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.