In a hard-hitting speech in parliament, Mateusz Morawiecki said: "If our partners do not understand that we do not agree to the unequal treatment of [member] states, to a stick which will always be used against us, just because someone does not like our government, then we will actually use this veto in the end."
At a meeting in Brussels on Monday, ambassadors from EU governments by a majority of votes approved a mechanism to make the pay-out of the bloc’s funds conditional on member states’ adherence to the rule of law, a move that has irritated Warsaw.
Poland and Hungary have denied EU accusations of violating democratic principles and undermining the independence of their courts.
Morawiecki told deputies on Wednesday that the EU could eventually “break up” if it adopts a mechanism that would allow countries to be punished by bureaucrats in Brussels based on their own interpretation of new rules.
He added: “This is not a division between right-wingers and left-wingers, this is a division between those who want the Polish nation to decide for itself and those who want a few officials in Brussels to decide our future."
The EU budget must be approved unanimously by the bloc’s 27 member states.
Most Poles are against the idea of linking access to EU funds to respect for the rule of law, a survey has found.
Fifty-seven percent of those polled supported a possible veto against the new EU budget if the spending plan is linked to the rule of law, Polish daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna reported.
Morawiecki said last week that his country could not accept a mechanism of this kind because it was based on “arbitrary and politically motivated criteria.”
He argued that such a system “could lead to sanctioning the application of double standards and different treatment of individual EU member states.”
In December 2017, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, took the unprecedented step of triggering Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland, stepping up pressure on Warsaw over contested judicial reforms.
(pk)
Source: PAP