Poland's national-conservative government has seriousened its rhetoric in its rule-of- law standoff with Brussels, threatening to turn all our cannon on the European Commission and if necessary build a coalition to defeat its president.
If the EU executive wants to push us against the wall, we have no choice but to pull out all the weapons in our arsenal and respond an eye for an eye," said Krzysztof Sobolewski, general secretary of the ruling Law and Justice PiS party.
Sobolewski told Polish state radio that if the commission did not release €35 bn 29.5 bn in pandemic relief funds, Warsaw would take legal action against Brussels, veto EU initiatives and an alliance to dismiss Ursula von der Leyen and her college of commissioners.
The threat came after Jarosaw Kaczy ski, who resigned as deputy prime minister in June but remains the chair of PiS and Poland's de facto leader, told Sieci magazine that Warsaw had no reason to fulfill its obligations to the bloc.
Kaczy ski said that Poland had respects its side of an agreement to roll back some of its controversial judicial reforms in exchange for EU funds, but our concessions have yielded nothing, but we have shown maximum goodwill, but our concessions have yielded nothing.
It was kept on our part, it was broken on their part, he said. It is time to draw conclusions. We had to try to make the issue clear. It is clear that everyone can see what the game is about. Warsaw has been embroiled in an increasingly ill-tempered dispute with the commission over the release of the recovery funds, with Brussels demanding Poland meet a series of rule-of- law milestones before grants and loans can be unlocked.
The Polish government, whose judicial changes are widely viewed as having amputated the independence of the country's court system in violation of EU standards, closed a controversial disciplinary chamber for judges last month.
Amid warnings that the chamber would be replaced by a new politically controlled body, Von der Leyen announced that Poland had not yet made enough progress to justify releasing a first tranche of funds.
Kaczy ski said the government would not take any further steps towards meeting the commission's requirements, accusing Brussels of wanting to dismantle the rule of law in Poland and force it into full submission to Germany. The Polish opposition is not fit into German-Russian plans to rule Europe. Polls show a large majority of Polish voters back remaining in the 27-member bloc. But opposition leaders warned that PiS's increasingly aggressive stance would eventually lead to the country being ejected from the EU.
Nobody will take seriously a man who, instead of large funds, prefers to give Poles poverty, lawlessness, the destruction of judicial independence, and Polexit, said Grzegorz Schetyna of the opposition Civic Platform.