The opposition Conservatives (PiS)-allied President Karol Nawrocki wrote to Prime Minister Donald Tusk demanding the immediate filing of a complaint against the European Union’s trade agreement with the Mercosur countries to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
In a letter sent to Tusk yesterday, Nawrocki challenged the PM to file a complaint with the ECJ over the way the agreement is being implemented.
“I am sending Prime Minister Donald Tusk a special letter demanding the immediate filing of a complaint against the European Union’s agreement with the Mercosur countries to the European Court of Justice,” wrote Nawrocki.
He went on to remind Tusk that the government had promised to do this if the agreement was implemented. As a result of decisions taken by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the agreement has been activated.
“The government promised this. To this day, that promise has not been fulfilled. The countryside cannot wait any longer. I am attaching a ready draft of such a complaint to my letter. Everything is prepared. All that is needed is to act. All avenues and possibilities must be used to stop the Mercosur agreement,” wrote Nawrocki.
The President went on to say that Polish farmers needed to be supported.
“The truth is simple and timeless: There is no strong state without strong agriculture. There is no sovereignty without food security. And there is no future without respect for those who cultivate that future with their own hands, through their daily toil, working from dawn to dusk.”
Nawrocki assessed that the situation in the Polish countryside is difficult because as well as being a demanding work environment “the agreement with the Mercosur countries, rising production costs, expensive fuel and fertilisers, market uncertainty, the pressure of cheap imports, and increasingly frequent conflicts that disrupt work”.
Tusk’s partners in the ruling coalition, the Polish People’s Party (PSL), which is traditionally a party close to farmers and rural areas, have been pressing for the government to file a lawsuit with the ECJ against the Mercosur agreement. The deal opens up EU markets to competition from Latin American food products but is attractive to European manufacturers and services in that it opens up Latin America to EU goods.
Tusk is not enthusiastic about challenging Mercosur in the European courts, despite the fact that Poland, together with France, has opposed the deal with South America. He has been accused by PiS of being in hoc with Germany, which was one of the main supporters of the agreement.
Nawrocki has attempted to cultivate contact with the PSL whom he and the opposition PiS sees as the party with which PiS could in future ally in a coalition government. Thus far, though, the overtures have fallen on deaf ears.
PSL in the last few years has lost support among farmers and in rural areas and is increasingly drawing its backing from urban areas among people who find Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) too left wing for their liking.
Farmers in Poland, though, now tend to support PiS or the most right-wing of Polish parties, the Confederation of the Polish Crown Party led by Grzegorz Braun MEP, whereas the more libertarian Confederation Party as well as the PSL draw most of their support from small urban areas.
