French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday Poland was isolating itself within the European Union and Polish citizens “deserve better” than a government at odds with the bloc’s democratic values and economic reform plans.
Macron said Warsaw, where a nationalist, eurosceptic government took office in 2015, was moving in the opposite direction to Europe on numerous issues and would not be able to dictate the path of Europe’s future. Poland rejected the accusations, saying Macron was misinformed, reports Reuters.
“Europe is a region created on the basis of values, a relationship with democracy and public freedoms which Poland is today in conflict with,” Macron said in Bulgaria on the third leg of a trip to central and eastern Europe to drum up support for his vision of a Europe that protects better its citizens.
He described Poland’s refusal to change its stance on a revision of the EU’s directive on “posted” workers – cheap labor from eastern countries posted temporarily to more affluent western countries. Macron has said the practice leads to “social dumping” and unfair competition.
“In no way will the decision by a country that has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe jeopardize the finding of an ambitious compromise,” he said.
In a scathing attack that could drag relations between western EU powers and the European Commission in Brussels on side and Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) government on the other to a new low, he said the Polish people deserved better.
“Poland is not defining Europe’s future today and nor will it define the Europe of tomorrow,” Macron said at a joint press conference with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev in the Black Sea resort city of Varna.
“Poland is not being isolated,” Witold Waszczykowski told a joint news conference in Warsaw with his Romanian and Turkish counterparts and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
“President Macron is not following carefully the news, doesn’t know what is happening in this part of Europe. But this happens sometimes,” he added.
On the three-day tour Macron has been seeking backing for his plans to tighten European rules on the employment abroad of labor from low-pay nations. Poland strongly opposes the plans.
While “posted” workers comprise less than 1 percent of the EU work force, the politically sensitive issue has for years exacerbated the divide between the bloc’s poor east and rich west.
