By Olivier Bault.
This article was originally published on Réinformation TV. Translated from French by Visegrád Post.
Poland – Visiting Warsaw from the 19 to the 21 September 2018, a delegation of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) of the European Parliament has met with members of the government and other Polish constitutional organs but also with representatives of the media and the civil society. The LIBE committee is indeed preparing a report over democracy and the rule of law in Poland following the template of the Sargentini report that was used as a basis for the vote of the 12 September 2018 against Hungary. A vote that is moreover disputed and that Budapest is to bring in front of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In the meantime, the preparation of this new report brings us a very interesting view on the very poorly democratic way the parliament in Strasbourg does function.
MEP Marek Jurek excluded from the delegation on decision of Rapporteur Moraes
Let’s overlook the fact that those reports over countries leaded by conservative parties are systematically entrusted to representatives of the most sectarian left: concerning Hungary, the rapporteur was the Dutch green MEP Judith Sargentini; concerning Poland, this is the president of the LIBE Committee himself, the British Labour MEP Claude Moraes. For this “study” visit in Poland, Claude Moraes, succeeded in having the leftist-liberal-libertarian majority of the LIBE Committee to adopt an ad hoc principle according to which one should exclude the Polish MEP’s from the delegation in order to “guarantee its full objectivity”.
The use of this expression was reported to us by the Polish MEP Marek Jurek whom we contacted last Tuesday on the phone and who appears to be the member of the LIBE Committee concerned by this surprising exclusion based on citizenship. “They come to remind [the Poles] that the majority has not all the rights but Moraes explains that ‘this is the will of the majority’ [to exclude me]”, said Marek Jurek.
Nicolas Bay (Rassemblement National, France), a member of the delegation (it might have been quite picky to exclude also the French in order to “guarantee a full objectivity”) who was also contacted yesterday by our correspondent, explained us: “We were already able to see last week in Strasbourg that the Sargentini report over ‘the situation of the rule of law in Hungary’ was incriminating and had the only aim to sanction this country, not because of any hypothetical failures but really because of its refusal to welcome any illegal migrants, what shows very well that the European Union is drifting into a punitive institution. This mission of the LIBE Committee in Warsaw, which program consists – concerning the civil society – in meeting only politicised and hostile NGOs, shows an undeniable bias.”
In order to speak on the press freedom in Poland: only four media hostile to the PiS
And indeed, the program of the meetings – which we had access to a still provisory version on Tuesday evening (the day before the flight to Warsaw) – foresees for example, for speaking about press freedom, discussions with the representatives of four media (in fact five, but two of them belong to the same group financed by George Soros), that are all hostile to the PiS, and from which three are radically hostile to the PiS, and whose positions stand from libertarian left to libertarian liberalism. No conservative media or conservative journalists association has been invited to speak on press freedom in Poland. Concerning the civil society, Marek Jurek succeeded in imposing the presence of a conservative NGO, the Institute Ordo Iuris, thanks to the groups of the European Conservatives and Reformists (which he belongs to as well as the PiS MEPs) and Europe of Nations and Freedom (Rassemblement National, Lega, FPÖ, etc.). This NGO is the exception that confirms the rule, as all other representatives (out of 12) stand for the most radical opposition and/or the abortionist and liberal-libertarian organisations – that question the Polish constitutional order and among which several are financed by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
The LIBE committee does not wish to meet with the second party of the opposition, that is doubtlessly considered as too conservative as well
Some meetings are foreseen with the parliamentary groups of the Civic Platform (PO) of the current President of the European Council Donald Tusk, of the PSL, an agrarian party that was an ally of the PO under Donald Tusk, and of Nowoczesna (“Modern”), a liberal party like the PO, but even more libertarian. No meeting was foreseen with the parliamentary group of Kukiz ’15, that has more deputies as the PSL and Nowoczesna in the parliament, what makes it the second party of the opposition behind the PO. The problem for the LIBE Committee is surely that it is a party that is more conservative than the PiS and that the Labour politician Claude Moraes obviously does only wish to discuss with people sharing similar opinions.
A report about the rule of law in Poland prepared in function of pre-established theses, like for Hungary
This trip to Poland of the LIBE Committee is only an alibi. The theses of the Moraes report against Poland are obviously already written and the delegation of the European Parliament seeks to avoid any meeting with representatives of the civil society or of the media that might not confirm them. This is the democracy according to the Brussels fashion. No doubt that the Sargentini report against Hungary was prepared the same way, what our sources within the European Parliament do confirm indeed.
