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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned the European Union against instigating “the third world war" by holding up the country’s access to the bloc’s funds.
While speaking to Financial Times, Morawiecki threatened that government would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal." He further suggested Poland could scupper the bloc’s ambitious plans for cutting greenhouse emissions.
The report said, Poland’s prime minister has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head", urging Brussels to withdraw threats of legal and financial sanctions if it wanted to resolve the country’s rule of law crisis.
In a move to ease tensions in the long-running dispute, which has raised fears of a Polish exit from the EU, Mateusz Morawiecki promised to dismantle by the end of the year a disciplinary chamber for judges that the European Court of Justice found to be illegal, it also said.
But he warned that if the European Commission “starts the third world war" by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal".
The commission has threatened Poland with sanctions after the country’s top court this month ruled that key elements of EU law were incompatible with its constitution
His belligerent tone comes after Poland won some respite in its escalating row with the bloc over the country’s unilateral decision to reject the primacy of EU law, undermining the legal order in the 27-nation union. While the bloc’s leaders discussed the challenge at their summit last week, heavyweights such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron called for restraint.
The EU is reassessing how aggressively to approach the rule-of-law crisis in Poland after Morawiecki told leaders his government will dissolve the controversial mechanism for disciplining judges. The prime minister told the newspaper, the relevant legislation will be presented by the end of the year, at the latest.
The row is the latest in the EU’s long-running battle with Poland’s nationalist government over changes to the judiciary that increased political influence over courts. Concern over the blurring of checks-and-balances in the EU’s biggest eastern member has led to a delay in approval of 36 billion euros ($42 billion) of EU funds earmarked for Poland.
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