Poland summons Belgian ambassador over PM war of words

Poland Friday summoned the Belgian ambassador to Warsaw on Friday, after Belgium’s prime minister spoke out against his Polish counterpart’s criticism of the EU amid a bitter clash over Poland’s controversial judicial reforms.

Belgian “Prime Minister (Alexander) De Croo has gone too far in testing the limits of Polish-Belgian relations,” Polish foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina said.

In an interview with the Financial Times published this week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused the EU of putting a “gun to our head” by demanding his country reverse judicial reforms while threatening sanctions.

Brussels believes the reforms hamper democratic freedoms but Poland says they are needed to root out corruption among judges.

Several EU members believe Brussels should not release 36 billion euros ($42 billion) in pandemic recovery money that Poland badly wants while the issue is unresolved.

“What is going to happen if the European Commission will start the third world war? If they start the third world war, we are going to defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal,” Morawiecki told the Financial Times.

De Croo fired back during a speech to the College of Europe in Bruges that “to those who give incendiary interviews and think it’s necessary to declare a new world war in the Financial Times, I want to say: you are playing a dangerous game.”

“You are playing with fire when waging war with your European colleagues for internal political reasons,” he added.

“Our Union is a union of values, not a cash machine. You cannot pocket all the money but refuse the values.”