A documentary portraying the political persecution of Poland’s conservative opposition was screened in Budapest on Monday evening, October 27th, followed by a discussion featuring former Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro and Hungarian cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyás.
Organised by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), the Budapest event highlighted growing unease about perceived double standards in Brussels.
The film, titled Taking Over and directed by Polish journalist Marcin Tulicki, examines the actions of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s left-liberal government since it took office in December 2023.
Through interviews and archival footage, it shows how Tusk has targeted the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, arresting former ministers and MPs, and taking control of public broadcasters and the prosecutor’s office. The film highlights how the government has sidelined judges seen as sympathetic to PiS while disregarding rulings it opposes.
Tulicki said before the screening that “December 2023 was the start of the scandalous past two years in Polish history.” The events, he added, “remind many people of the Communist era.”
“In Poland, the prosecutor’s office was taken over, judges who were uncomfortable were removed, politicians were imprisoned, and former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski was forced to flee to Hungary and seek political asylum,” he said.
After the screening, Zbigniew Ziobro and Gergely Gulyás took part in a discussion focused on the state of democracy and the rule of law in Poland.
Ziobro, who served as justice minister under the previous PiS government, said he and other conservative politicians have faced politically motivated investigations. “During our time in power, we provided state funds to conservative organisations which had long been excluded from donations—this was something the Tusk government did not like, and that is why we are being persecuted,” he said.
In 2024, Ziobro had his house raided by police—over the alleged misuse of state funds—while he was in hospital fighting cancer.
The fact that Tusk has stated several times that his government would “interpret the law as they understand it” should have caused concern in EU institutions, but the EU has turned a blind eye to abuses by a government it supports.
When the European Commission decided last year to unfreeze EU funds for Poland under Tusk, funds that had been blocked during the PiS era due to alleged rule-of-law violations, it was clear that the rule of law was just an empty slogan, Ziobro said, adding that under Tusk ,there is only “pseudo rule of law.”
According to the former minister, Tusk is directed from abroad, from Brussels and Berlin. What he is doing is authoritarian, and the EU not only agrees with him but encourages him. For EU institutions, the rule of law means the possibility to exert political pressure on member states they don’t agree with.
Gulyás, Hungary’s Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, echoed those concerns. “The rule of law in Poland has clearly been violated—that is beyond question,” he said. “That is why Hungary granted political asylum to Marcin Romanowski.”
He added that in Brussels, the concept of rule of law means nothing. The EU’s real goal is to dismantle nation states, and those who emphasise sovereignty are punished. Financial support is not really linked to the rule of law, as Brussels wants us to think, but only to whether a member state supports European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political line.
“They decide on punishing member states purely on the basis of raw power,” Gulyás emphasised.
The discussion also turned to the future of Polish-Hungarian relations and the Visegrád Four (V4) Central European alliance.
Gulyás said the V4 had long been an effective platform for the region to defend its interests in Brussels, but that “Tusk has broken with this tradition and sought to dismantle V4 cooperation.”
Ziobro agreed, saying that “Tusk’s government is undermining the traditional Polish-Hungarian friendship. Orbán puts his nation’s interests first, while Tusk follows Brussels.”
