Opponent to the government. Luckily.
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(Foto: imago images/Eastnews)
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It is a victory for common sense: Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has vetoed an anti-European law by the ruling national-populist government.
The media law, which would exclude non-European radio and television stations such as the popular TVN24 channel, cannot come into force. Spicy: Duda belongs to the ruling law and justice party (PiS), which with its coalition pushed through the controversial law shortly before Christmas.
With his move, Duda averts massive damage to the largest Eastern European EU member state. The point that the law would damage Poland as an investment location is entirely justified. The media law would be the expulsion of the US group Discovery, which owns the TVN channel – and thus the television channel TVN24, which is critical of the government. The EU Commission and the US government had warned that the controversial law was an attack on freedom of the press.
Poland’s head of state is taking the side of the compatriots, tens of thousands of whom demonstrated against the media law and the ever-increasing curtailment of citizens’ rights. Duda also vetoed the worst measures of the judicial reform planned by the PiS coalition, because of which the EU Commission initiated infringement proceedings against Poland.
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So Duda is at least a rock solid: he does not go through the grossest nonsense and the worst planned upheavals of his former party – which he cannot belong to during his term of office for formal reasons.
Duda is one of the once closest former employees of PiS boss Jarosław Kaczyński and was placed at the head of the state by the PiS, which wants to fundamentally rebuild Poland, in the hope of a loyal follower.
Crack in the guide
Now there is a crack in the Polish leadership. Because Duda no longer seems to be ready to accept the most daring antics of the cabinet from PiS and two southpaw small parties. These would drive Poles against the wall. Because of the media law, the debate has already started in Washington as to whether the USA should be allowed to continue to support a country that harasses such freedom and human rights.
Warsaw’s relations with Washington are the crucial lifeline alongside its economically important EU membership: the USA, in response to German concerns, pushed through in NATO that the Eastern European allies would receive significantly more military support. Moscow is a thorn in the side, because it wants a weak western flank.
It is therefore right that Duda stopped the media law with his veto: Poland cannot use a confrontation with the USA, especially now that the Kremlin is gathering its troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border. On the contrary.
And for the PiS, too, Duda’s step should be the right one: Because the hardliners ensure with their line that the party becomes ineligible for more and more Poles. A majority supported the PiS in the last elections. Because of their social and pension policies. But not because of the confrontation with Brussels and Washington. Because there is no country in the European Union where the population is as pro-European as the Oder and Vistula.
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