It should be obvious by now that PiS won’t back down easily. It is implementing a plan, devised 12 years ago, that sets Poland on the road to a one-party autocracy with the judiciary as its pawn.
The party has attacked the country’s democratic institutions and judiciary since 2005. With fervent, conspiracy-laden rhetoric, PiS blamed the country’s negotiated transition and ex-communist elite for all of Poland’s ills and took concrete steps to rid public life of them. [...]
Between 2005 and 2007, the coalition government led by PiS purged public media and pressured private outlets, under the claim by then Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński that they were owned by “oligarchs.” At the same time, it launched a ferocious lustration campaign against the country’s intellectuals and waged a war on the judiciary. [...]
Such a short-sighted approach is dangerous. Other members and members-in-waiting could feel emboldened by Warsaw’s renegadism, and having rogue countries in the EU’s backyard would pose a danger to the bloc — especially if those rogue countries are geographically close to Russia.
The EU has no choice but to keep pressuring Poland if it wants to prevent the risk of further contagion and the certain demise of the Union as a community of values.
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