The situation of the rule of law and democracy in Poland (debate)
Frank Engel (PPE). – Mr President, I will hand the floor to Mr Elmar Brok if he prefers, but otherwise I will relay it – I find it exceptionally funny, Mr Saryusz-Wolski, that somebody should use the language that you have just used after having spent virtually your the whole political life serving the very system that you now condemn. It is a little strange, but oh well.
What I wanted to say is that Mr Timmermans really encapsulated it all when he started, when he said: ‘I hope I can have a dialogue with the Polish authorities’. But we are not having a dialogue with the Polish authorities; we are not having a dialogue with the Polish Government either. It is again a bit like yesterday – poor Mr Matti Maasikas who has to stand up for something which I am sure he would rather not have to stand up for. The Polish Government is just as absent as their loudspeaker in this House, who gave out a seven-minute statement about essentially not much and then left with most of his colleagues and spent the rest of the morning with the Polish press – his friends, I suppose – outside of the plenary hall. This is the way in which this Polish authority, this Polish Government, this Polish majority, acts. Sophia in ‘t Veld was totally right when she explained that. It is apodictic; it is absolute; we are all wrong; we have no idea what is happening there; we get it all wrong and they are all right.
The problem in Poland is that they are trying to change the state and to model it so that generations to come will have no chance to change it back for the better. That is the thing that we have to be concerned about, because there are millions and millions of Poles – probably half of them, more than half of them – that would still make up a pretty big Member State who want a future in Europe; who want a democratic future; who want a future in a free society; who want a future in a society where they are allowed to think, to speak, to demonstrate and to be what you are – not what God supposedly wants you to be.
Those Poles we are standing up for, because they have chosen to be part of the European society, and that is why we care. They are not only sovereign Poles; they are also sovereign Europeans, and they want back their sovereignty over thought, over speech and over behaviour.