Poland’s foreign minister on Monday challenged the legality of Donald Tusk’s re-election to a top European Union job, saying the vote was “fake” and that it exposed the EU as having “double standards.”
The view wasn’t shared by the aides to President Andrzej Duda.
Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, was re-elected for a second 2.5-year term as European Council head at a recent EU summit in Brussels.
Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said that the summit took a “pseudo-vote” on Tusk, by only asking who was “against,” but not who was “for” or who abstained. Waszczykowski told TVN24 that there was no vote on Poland’s counter-candidate.
“We have experts’ opinions now saying that Tusk was elected in a way that can be questioned on the level of European law,” Waszczykowski said.
He said the government of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo will decide whether to officially question the vote.
But he later toned down his message, saying Tusk’s re-election was of third-rate importance to Poland, which was only trying to protect its interests.
Poland was the only one among the EU’s 28 members to protest the re-election of Tusk, whom Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party considers a political foe. The party also is critical of the EU and uses every occasion to promote its view that the bloc needs deep reform.
“We will be showing society what kind of union we are in now, a union that applies double standards,” Waszczykowski said.
But Krzysztof Szczerski, foreign affairs adviser to Duda, said that Tusk’s re-election was a closed case and shouldn’t be raised again.
