Warsaw summons French envoy after Macron slams Polish PM

Poland said Friday it had summoned the French ambassador after President Emmanuel Macron called the Polish premier “a far-right anti-Semite who bans LGBT people”.

Macron’s accusations came after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki criticised him for his repeated talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“As a result of assertions by the French president in an interview with Le Parisien, Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau decided to summon the French ambassador,” foreign ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina said on Twitter.

Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said Macron’s comments were “incomprehensible” and put them down to “political emotions” ahead of France’s presidential election whose first round of voting begins on Sunday.

“To speak of a Polish prime minister in the context of anti-Semitism is quite simply a lie. It has nothing to do with the facts,” Muller told reporters.

Macron made the comments against Morawiecki in an interview published Thursday in the Le Parisien newspaper following earlier criticism by the Polish leader.

“How many times have you negotiated with Putin and what have you achieved?” Morawiecki told reporters on Monday, addressing Macron.

“We do not discuss, we do not negotiate with criminals. Criminals have to be fought against,” he added.

“Nobody negotiated with Hitler. Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?”

Macron hit back on Wednesday, telling TF1 the Polish leader’s comments were “baseless and scandalous”.

He said the Polish leader was from a “far-right party” and was “supporting” his rival Marine Le Pen in the presidential election.

“I take full responsibility for having spoken to the president of Russia, in the name of France, to avoid the war and to build a new architecture for peace in Europe several years ago,” he added.

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