Sunday will be the ultimate electoral showdown in European politics as Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) goes head to head with a turbo-charged Europhile opposition in what is easily the most salient EU election of the year.
Despite a buoyant economy and rising geopolitical fortune caused by the Ukrainian war plus the relative decline of Germany, PiS faces a tough fight as it battles a progressive united front in the form of Brussels insider Donald Tusk’s liberal Civic Coalition (KO) as well a populist insurgency on its right flank with the Konfederacja party.
Less than a week before the vote, The European Conservative sat down with former Polish deputy prime minister and current Minister for Development Jadwiga Emilewicz, formerly of the conservative Porozumienie party, but now closely allied with PiS.
A key part of the PiS electoral platform this election cycle has been the issue of alleged German and EU interference. Could you give examples of where that is the case, particularly in the support of the opposition?
Well, I wouldn’t say that it is precisely interference in the election process. I would say that there are a lot of disturbances between the Polish point of view on European reform and that of Germany—and that of Brussels.
And the key issue is the one dedicated to the decision-making process. We did hear a lot from Germany. Three weeks ago I had a meeting with my counterpart in Germany, the deputy minister of economy, and he said very openly that yes, we are ready, we Germans are ready for opening the gate to Ukrainian entrance to the EU.
But [he said], of course it must be combined with changes to the voting system—that means a majority voting system, which is absolutely not acceptable by the Polish side.
In my opinion, the change of view in Kyiv three-four weeks ago towards Poland is deeply rooted in the expectations being presented by Germany.
And the second point, which is obviously very important also for us, is the refugee policy and the refugee package.
We as Poles are absolutely against this compulsory asylum sharing system; we did have such a system working after 2015.
So when Angela Merkel decided to open the door for refugees—it was only 2 million that time—we paid an enormous amount of money for Turkish people not to allow those communities, the whole community, to enter Europe.
This policy brings the effects we can observe in Germany, in Spain, in French cities, and basically, the answer of the German society in the last Bavarian election shows that people don’t accept this style of policy.
What we observed, and what we as Polish politicians are trying to convince our friends from the western part of Europe of, is that this is a clash of civilizations, and those who are coming into Europe really want to combat our civilization—and that is why we should definitely change our refugee policy.
And this [clash] is still not acceptable to a majority of Europeans—but only to the elites. This interference in the electoral process is the basis of the decision-making process in Granada last summit, or in Brussels.
Being in Warsaw the past few days, I’ve noticed a lot of youth activists with KO and relatively few with PiS—a fact that’s borne out in opinion polls that show PiS relatively unpopular among the youth. Do you believe that this is the actual case, and does that present a long-term problem for conservative rule in this country?
Today I took part in an election discussion at Poznan University. So there were a lot of young people. I’m also an active lecturer at that university and I know that the attitude among young people is massively against us.
We have been in power for the last eight years. In general, young people are trying to be against those who are in power. That was a similar situation in 2014 when Andrzej Duda won the presidential election.
He did it through votes from young people voting against that time’s establishment. We simply are the establishment right now after those eight years. So I presume that the attitude towards power among young people is against us. This is the first point.
The second is that, in general, what you observed in the Western European university towns’ young generation is leftish rather than right wing, and that has not happened in the last eight years. It started in the 1960s.
What we propose as the right wing party, what we expect from the human being, is responsibility for others. This is not very popular. We present that a human being should be more responsible for himself, herself, and the relatives.
Once you put yourself in the centre of the world, it is not a very conservative approach. So that is the place where [one may find] the origins of this attitude toward us among young people.
And the third point is that a lot of us people get used to us. We’ve been overused through the last eight years, and this is normal. Also, in politics, people are looking for some new faces.
I’ve met a lot of PiS activists this week. In private, they believe that liberalism in Western Europe is failing. Is this also the dominant perception among your party?
In the Daily Telegraph yesterday or two days ago, there was a very nice picture of the German economy compared with the Polish one. So the failing German economy deployed itself away from industry, contrary to the Polish situation where we established a lot of manufacturers, we were able to catch a lot of investments, foreign direct investments, in very sophisticated industry sectors.
What we see is an economy and policy in crisis in the Western world.
I wouldn’t say it’s a liberal market, because the crisis has appeared out of the very protected market, very overregulated, with a deep belief that the ‘Fit for 55’ package [the green transition] would bring another heaven to the European economy. Whereas today, none of the PV [photo-volatic batteries] factories are present in Europe, all of them are in China. More wind farms are now created in China than in Europe.
We think that this Western model of economy, which I wouldn’t call liberal, fully liberal, is now bankrupt.
PiS is facing a challenge from the Right as well as the Left in the form of the Konfederacja Party. Speaking to Konfederacja activists, they say PiS cannot be trusted on immigration. They say the country is opening up to immigration through the visa system. How would you respond to that?
Well, I would ask you and other guys who are blaming us about that, to take a small walk around the Polish cities.
Not only the big ones, such as the capital city Warsaw or Krakow or Poznań, but also the small villages. You can really feel safe and secure there. There are no social disturbances. You can go with your kid to school, or even your small kids can go on their own to school without any problems, without any fears that someone is going to disturb them. So this is the real truth about how this policy has been working throughout the last eight years. We did not accept the general European policy and approach towards refugees.
It is the same as we did with NordStream 2. Even Ursula von der Leyen has said “it’s a pity we didn’t listen to Poland.” In the next two years, I don’t want to hear the same “it’s a pity we didn’t listen to Poland on the refugees.”
So this is what I would like to say to my young colleagues from Konfederacja: I really do understand that if you do not take part in governing, then you can say anything. But after entering the system, you must change your approach.
