As the UK government ties itself in knots over the legal and political niceties of negotiating Brexit, Poland is successfully demonstrating a have-your-cake-and-eat-it approach: ignoring Brussels without giving up the benefits of European Union membership.
The right-wing government led by the Law and Justice Party (PiS), whose members are the UK Conservatives’ allies in Europe, is waging an unprecedented all-out war with the European Commission over issues ranging from alleged attempts to control the judiciary to illegal logging.
It is a toxic spat that could further split the EU at a time when the bloc is facing complex changes and internal tensions that will result from Britain’s departure.
In recent weeks EU institutions have threatened to suspend Poland’s voting rights in Brussels. But in a series of interviews with this newspaper, leading politicians in Warsaw dismissed the threats and pledged to persevere with their controversial agenda, which they claim is legal under Poland’s constitution.
The row is centred on a planned reform of the judiciary that includes giving the justice minister, who is also the prosecutor-general, the power to dismiss judges and appoint their successors.
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Brussels says this would subvert the rule of law and violate EU principles, but Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s foreign minister, told The Sunday Times that such claims are “baseless” and “ridiculous”.
“We won the election because we promised to reform the judiciary,” he said, adding that the EU had no jurisdiction over legal matters.
He quoted surveys showing that more than 70% of Poles want to reform what they see as a corrupt and inefficient system. A judge who was caught shoplifting last year has sparked outrage by avoiding a professional ban.
“With Brexit we are going to lose the EU’s second-biggest economy and despite this disaster the commission now wants to start procedures to lose Poland as well?” Waszczykowski asked.
Brussels insiders fear the commission may have overplayed its hand as key parts of the justice reform were vetoed by Poland’s president Andrzej Duda, who will now send an amended version back to parliament.
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Opposition from the commission appears to have boosted the popularity of the ruling PiS which is polling at 38% — up from the 37.6% it won in the 2015 election. As a result, Polish ministers now compete in their Euroscepticism in a bid to win favour with voters, even ignoring an EU injunction demanding the end of logging in the Unesco-protected Bialowieza forest.
“Ministers who don’t have an issue with the commission now fear being regarded as losers,” said Slawomir Debski, head of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a government-linked think tank.
The dispute is causing alarm in the EU because of the size and influence of the 40m-strong former Soviet-bloc country, the biggest recipient of Brussels funding. Warsaw received €13.4bn in 2015 alone — 3% of its GDP at the time.
Together with Hungary it is a leading opponent of an EU scheme to distribute refugees. Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor, said last week that countries rejecting the programme should have their EU funds cut.
In a swift response the PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, an enigmatic figure, announced a “historic counteroffensive” — including claiming war reparations from Germany.
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Kaczynski, 68, does not hold political office but is the mastermind of the far-reaching illiberal overhaul of Polish society. His agenda, which includes a complete takeover of public media and a total ban on abortion, has the backing of rural voters and an increasing number of middle-class professionals.
Poland has achieved record employment under this government; growth is about 3.6%, with a budget surplus and a steady influx of foreign investment.
“PiS stopped the stealing,” said Tadeusz Kluk-Murdzenski, a high-level business consultant from Warsaw, referring to a crackdown on VAT fraud.
Some surveys suggest that PiS support runs strong among the 800,000 Polish voters who live in Britain. Back home, however, society is bitterly divided. Tensions are rising between PiS supporters and their opponents — liberal city-dwellers who march in their thousands against the government.
Civic Platform, the liberal party that governed a coalition for eight years up to 2015 is polling at just over 20%.
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Radosław Fogiel, a personal aide to Kaczynski, compared the split to the United States following Donald Trump’s election. “We’re becoming like the Hutu and the Tutsi,” he also said, referring to the ethnic conflict that led to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Politicians, commentators and ordinary people no longer talk to each other, he admitted.
Warsaw, a vibrant metropolis with bold architecture, trendy shops and elegant restaurants, has become the darling of international lifestyle magazines. Here the PiS-loathing urban elite congregates at Saviour Square, the epicentre of the cool, new Poland that could easily rival the most fashionable areas of London.
“I am worried about raising a child in the society that this government is trying to build,” said Justyna Dabkowska, 40, a single mother who works in communications. Leading PiS figures deride gender-equality activists as “aborters” and “genderists”, she complained.
Dabkowska, who is Jewish, had been shocked by a tweet by the PiS MP Bogdan Rzonca that read: “I wonder why there are so many Jews among the aborters, despite the Holocaust.” He deleted the tweet following a public outcry.
An inquiry into the 2010 plane crash in Russia that killed Kaczynski’s twin brother Lech, then president of Poland, has caused further divisions. An investigation proved that the crash resulted from pilot error, but many PiS supporters believe it was a sinister plot.
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Ministers are bracing themselves for the next fight with Brussels over a plan to ban foreign investors from owning more than 15% of local media outlets — a move that could potentially silence government critics.
In Muchowka, a village in southern Poland, PiS supporters are undeterred. Kazimierz Krawczyk, 65, a former local leader of Solidarity, the trade union that helped to bring down communism, voted for PiS after his two sons emigrated to London in search of well-paid work.
He believes that while PiS may not be doing “everything right”, it has improved the lives of working people. “[This] government was democratically elected. Let it govern for four years,” he said.