WARSAW — After a week in which Poland was hit with a European Commission probe over government actions on the constitutional court and had its sovereign debt rating downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, Warsaw is launching a public relations counter-offensive.
President Andrzej Duda will be in Brussels Monday, followed by Prime Minister Beata Szydło on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France. The pair are on a European tour to show a friendlier face of Poland’s Law and Justice ruling party.
The PR battle is largely for external consumption and starts with a meeting between Duda and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council and Polish prime minister from 2007-2014, who says that the new right-wing Polish government considers him its “enemy No. 1.”
The two will hold a joint news conference on Monday.
Szydło will address the European Parliament during a debate Tuesday on the changes taking place in Poland.
“I will stress in the EP during the debate that Poland — like every other country in the European Union — has the right to undertake sovereign decisions affecting our internal politics,” she told the Polish press.
“There is no sense in being concerned by this. We have to follow our own path and we can’t give way to any pressure” — Jarosław Kaczyński
The government is also taking aim at the domestic political opposition, which has marshaled street protests in the country, mounted a determined but ineffective opposition to legislative changes in the Polish parliament, and expressed negative opinions about the government to foreigners.
In a new campaign-style spot, the ruling party proclaims, “Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but the problem begins when the losing party and their journalistic sympathizers begin to pour out their rage and frustration outside the country.”
Angered at the flood of negative stories about the country, Law and Justice MEPs also took out ads with foreign media (including POLITICO), entitled, “What is really happening in Poland?” and putting the bulk of the blame for the current situation on the actions of the previous government.
Polish President Andrzej Duda
Frans Timmermans, the Commission vice president in charge of rule of law, sent two letters to Polish authorities: one asking about changes to the Constitutional Tribunal that critics worry will hobble the country’s highest constitutional court, the other about the government taking direct control of the public media.
He got a toughly worded response from Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. Ziobro accused Timmermans of being politically partisan and admonished him to “exercise more restraint in instructing and cautioning the Parliament and the government of a sovereign and democratic state.”
Just days later, Timmermans pushed through the Commission’s unprecedented probe of Poland’s recent measures related to the Constitutional Tribunal. Last Wednesday’s action was the first step towards possible sanctions against Warsaw.
That prospect isn’t worrying Warsaw much, as any such decision has to be taken unanimously and Hungary won’t back it. In addition, other EU countries don’t want to add Poland to the EU’s list of current crises: Greece’s finances, migrants and a possible British exit.
The PR push doesn’t necessarily imply a coming change in the government’s approach. Poland’s most powerful politician, Law and Justice party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, has stuck to his rhetorical guns, saying that Warsaw would stick by the policies that have aroused domestic opposition and foreign concern.
“There is no sense in being concerned by this. We have to follow our own path and we can’t give way to any pressure,” Kaczyński told the Rzeczpospolita newspaper. “No one should have any doubts that there will be any sort of yielding and any sort of concessions.”
Surprise downgrade
But the drumbeat of negative publicity is proving costly.
On Friday, Standard & Poor’s surprised both the government and financial markets by downgrading Poland a notch to BBB+, the first such step by a rating agency since the transition away from communism a quarter century ago.
There is a growing sense in Warsaw that the government has to change the narrative.
“The downgrade reflects our view that Poland’s system of institutional checks and balances has been eroded significantly as the independence and effectiveness of key institutions, such as the constitutional court and public broadcasting, is being weakened by various legislative measures initiated since the October 2015 election,” S&P said in its report.
The złoty immediately lost over 2 percent to the euro and 1.5 percent to the dollar, and the government reacted with anger and disbelief at the prospect of higher borrowing costs.
“The decision … is incomprehensible from an economic and financial analysis point of view,” said the official English language response from the finance ministry.
A different tone
There is a growing sense in Warsaw that the government has to change the narrative.
Duda sat for an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung where he stressed that Poland’s relations with Germany are “very important” and that he is “very pained” by all emotional responses that have taken place in recent weeks.
That’s a different tone from the one adopted by Ziobro when he wrote recently to Günther Oettinger, the German digital economy commissioner, about concerns over the new Polish media law.
“These type of words, spoken by a German politician, create the worst possible connotations among Poles,” Ziobro wrote. “Also for me, as the grandson of a Polish officer who during the Second World War fought in the underground Home Army against ‘German Oversight.’”
When Duda meets with Tusk, he will try to drain some drama from Poland’s current situation.
“There’s no reason for a fuss,” Krzysztof Szczerski, a presidential adviser, told the Fakt24.pl website. “The emotions around Poland will fade and in a year hardly anyone will remember them.”