Former Polish Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Romanowski fled to Hungary and was granted asylum. How do you assess Romanowski’s situation, and how does this case affect Hungarian-Polish relations?
From a legal perspective, the case is clear. Romanowski has been charged by the Polish prosecutor’s office with the embezzlement of state funds. These are very serious matters — we are talking about 112 million zloty, roughly 25 million euros. Consequentially, he should currently be in pre-trial detention. That was the court’s decision, but he fled the country because he knows the severity of the punishment he could face. In Poland, democratic fundamental rights are guaranteed, the rights of the accused to a defence are respected, and both the courts and the prosecutor’s office are independent and impartial. Yet Romanowski still chose to flee. In a manner entirely contrary to EU law, Viktor Orbán then granted him asylum. Polish authorities issued a European Arrest Warrant, which is based on the principle that EU member states can trust one another. In other words, this process should, in theory, be automatic — no one is supposed to refuse it.
What does it mean for Hungarian-Polish relations that the Hungarian government is refusing to comply?
It is a matter of Orbán protecting his colleagues within the Law and Justice (PiS) party. This has nothing to do with EU law — on the contrary, it violates it, breaching multiple EU treaties. In my opinion, the EU should initiate and infringement procedure against Hungary for this,
as Orbán’s government is aiding and protecting suspects.
The Polish people and the Polish government are awaiting change in Hungary. The question is not whether relations with Hungary are good, because they are not. Of course, Orbán has good relations with Jarosław Kaczyński (leader of PiS) because autocrats protect one another, just as Anne Applebaum (American historian and journalist, wife of Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski) writes. However, when it comes to the Hungarian and Polish people, we are brothers throughout history. That is the current situation.
So the situation is bad right now.
Yes, it is – at Orbán’s level. But as far as the people go, we are friends.
The Hungarian government’s propaganda is taking a rather strong stance against Poland. Minister Gergely Gulyás, heading the Prime Minister’s Office, has claimed that Poland is experiencing a rule of law crisis. Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has stated that “the current Polish rule of law situation clearly demonstrates EU leaders’ double standards: if one-tenth of this was to happen in Hungary, Ursula von der Leyen would already be drafting a proposal to deploy peacekeeping forces.”
This is about lies and manipulation. This is the method of all autocrats — Kaczyński, Morawiecki (former Prime Minister), and it is Orbán’s method as well.
We know this; they always lie.
So far, we have have won every lawsuit when we represented individual cases against the PiS government in European courts, as they had violated the treaties of the European Union. The same applies to Orbán — he also loses in European courts. Moreover, investigative journalists uncovered evidence that the Hungarian government had been spying on OLAF, which was investigating the case of István Tiborcz. This has been recently discussed in the European Parliament. Additionally, Orbán is Vladimir Putin’s greatest friend and ally — this is entirely obvious; he is attempting to block, for instance, the freezing of 190 billion dollars in Russian assets.
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