A secret meeting (secret until afterwards) took place last week between Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party in Poland, and Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary. Poland and Hungary are two of the “Visegrad Four” countries, which together are looking to resist the refugee resettlement mandates that the quota czars in Brussels are attempting to enforce.
At the moment the European Union is unhappy with the conservative Polish government’s changes to the country’s courts and media, and is considering economic sanctions against the Poles for going against the diktats of the center in Brussels.
The article below from Sächsische Zeitung discusses last week’s meeting in southern Poland. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:
A Secret Meeting at the “Green Sheep”
Poland and Hungary are looking for a way to proceed together against the EU.
by Paul Flickinger, SZ correspondent in Warsaw
It was an almost perfect coup. Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski sat down to a trout dinner in the Polish Pieniny Mountains, while a Hungarian internet portal was the first to report on the secret meeting. Neither Budapest nor Warsaw had announced the meeting.
For almost six hours on Wednesday evening, Orban and Kaczynski discussed the political situation in Europe. The meeting was private. The report in Polish government circles was that the two had met only as heads of governing parties. Contrary to initial speculation, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo did not attend.
As a meeting place, Orban and Kaczynski had chosen the unprepossessing guest house “At the Green Sheep” in the southern Polish village Niedzica. Until 1918, the mountain village had belonged to Austria-Hungary, and is therefore still a highly symbolic place for Budapest. There was no time to visit the nearby Hungarian castle.
As recently as Spring, Kaczynski had refused a meeting in Warsaw with Orban because of the 53-year-old Hungarian’s Russia-friendly policy. Now, it is said that Kaczynksi’s party, PiS (“Law and Justice”), pressed Orban for a meeting. According to Hungarian media, there was discussion of a common front in the battle against the EU-wide distribution of refugees as well as in the negotiations with British prime Minister David Cameron, who favors cutting the British welfare monies for foreign EU citizens — specifically Polish and Hungarian. That is how Cameron hopes to convince Britons to remain in the EU. Officially, Poland is vehemently opposed to these plans, but Foreign Minister Witold Wasczykowski recently offered London an odd deal. Warsaw is prepared to accept worse treatment of its workers for a firm NATO base.
According to reports from Polish press outlets critical of the government, Kaczynski and Orban exchanged ideas above all on how their plans for state reform can be accomplished in the face of EU opposition. For years, Orban has been a model for Kaczynski and his PiS. Hungary is already long past a restriction of the rights of the constitutional courts and a media reform. Thanks to an electoral reform, Orban has managed to be elected to a second term. He was criticized for that by the EU, to be sure, but he put his controversial laws into effect. Orban’s experience is important for Kaczynski in order to avoid a reduction of EU funds, commented the Polish opposition leader Pawel Zaleski.
EU Legal Proceeding Against Warsaw
Orban’s party, Fidesz, whose election — like that of PiS — profited from an eavesdropping scandal, is much stronger in Hungary than Kaczynski’s governing party. A two-thirds majority has several times allowed it to alter the constitution as it sees fit.
Kaczynski, who has a simple plurality in parliament, had to react more swiftly than Orban and immediately transformed the most important regulatory bodies of government. Because of the controversial reforms in Poland, the EU Commission intends to introduce a procedure to investigate possible dangers to the constitutional state. “We are initiating a process we developed in 2014,” said EU Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday.
Brussels’ tougher stance is not a surprise. The EU made it clear last weekend that it intends to make use of the 2014 constitutionality procedure. EU commissioners Frans Timmermans and Günther Oettinger had already commented critically on the reform of the Polish constitutional court and the new media law.[1]
Kaczynski and Orban want to give a more significant role to the well-known Visegrad Group (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Czechia) — known until now as a debating society — and proceed in concert against EU refugee quotas or plans for an intensified EU integration. This last thing is decisively rejected by national patriotic populists like Orban and Kaczynski.
Note:
| 1. | In Die Achse des Guten is an article by Dirk Maxeiner that takes note of the CDU/CSU party apparatus’ blocking the extension of the contract of the Editor-in-Chief of ZDF (Second German Broadcasting), Nikolaus Brende, despite the protests of ZDF’s director. The reporter closes his article this way: “My suggestion for the best thing to do: Dear Poland, don’t make such a fuss. Take an example from Germany. You can do this kind of thing absolutely quietly and without any law.” |
Hope they close their borders and keep them closed. Good for them.
Yes, for a while it seems that German media has been obsessively writing about Poland. At the same time Polish media, largely liberal and against the new governing party, PiS, has also been hysterically reporting every anti-Polish utterance in the West or the EU, as proof that the sky is about to fall down… recently, they made a big fuss about the credit rating agency Standard & Poor reducing Poland’s credit rating, also saying that the value of the Polish zloty had plummetted. All the while neglecting Standard & Poor’s controversies in the past (I believe they were fined by the US government for manipulating credit ratings?), and not mentioning that the Zloty was in fact weaker against, say, the British pound, back in November… besides, PiS has not had time yet to mess anything up economically.
Personally, I’m not too keen on Jaroslaw Kaczynski. He is often compared to Orban (as if that’s a bad thing), although while Orban’s party, Fidesz, enjoys a huge parliamentary majority, and Hungarians are said (according to what I’ve heard) to often say “I don’t like Fidesz, but I like Orban”, in Poland Kaczynski has to “hide” behind his puppets, president Duda and prime minister Szydlo – if he were to stand as the candidate, he would be defeated. He also has a tendency to inflame public opinion by using terms such as “a worse sort of Pole” to describe his opposition.
Nonetheless, PiS was elected mainly because people were fed up of 8 years of government of the liberal PO, during which time many corrupt dealings took place between the heads of Poland’s institutions, added to which people were angry about PO bowing down to the EU, on the issue of refugee “quotas”. PiS only in the final weeks of the campaign jumped onto the anti-“refugee” bandwagon, and are NOT the main anti-“refugee” parties (these are 3rd-place Kukiz and 7th-place KORWiN), however Kaczynski seized on the opportunity to attack PO about how their stance may lead to “Swedish-style ghettos” being formed in Poland. if there is one issue that unifies Poles of all stripes, it’s the issue of Islam and “cultural enrichment” and after such pronouncements Polish voters, in considerably higher numbers than expected, and against almost all the opinion of the mainstream media, backed the new PiS government.
Personally I’m not fully convinced that they’ll be a good government – however the problems that Europe as a whole is likely to face over the next 4 years mean that Poland’s problems could pale into insignificance. And if the election of PiS means that Poland avoids these larger problems, then it’s good that they won the election.
Thank God for the few patriots left in Europe. In times to come, if they prevail, we will look back and say never was so much owed by so many to so few.
I’ve been thinking along those lines recently myself. Originally said by Winston Churchill after the Battle of Britain (1940), it applies now, as well.
Do you mean ” The Few” ?
Point of order:
As some know, not all long established Europeans are Indo-European (at least by language).
The very fact that the Polish (and especially the Czechs and Slovaks) are talking to the Hungarians at all is significant.
Some of us know, Countess; the Hungarians (and Estonians) are mainly descendants of the Magyars, who migrated from central Asia around the 9th century. Not wishing to show off, but maybe you shouldn’t assume everyone knows this?
Belated correction: I forgot the Finns- apologies.
I believe Basque is also not Ind0-European, but, of course, they don’t exactly have a country of their own.
And, as I said in my post, “As some know,” — SOME — I didn’t assume “everyone knows.”
Basque is not only not Indo-European, but it is also unrelated to any other known language. Some scholars think it may be related to Etruscan (now extinct), but this is not definite.
I like to think that the Basques might be the descendants of cousins of the Fir Bolg, who according to Irish legend were the first inhabitants of Ireland. They were invaded and exterminated (or absorbed) by the Tuatha De Danaan, the “People of Danaan”, who were later invaded by the Goidels, i.e. the Celts, and are thought to have entered Irish myth as the Fairies.
The Celts were probably the first Indo-Europeans to reach both Iberia and Eire. According to their own origin myth, they came from Anatolia, crossing the Mediterranean and making stops in Crete, Sicily, and other islands. There is some archeological evidence that suggests this may be true. They then arrived in what is now Spain, crossed the Iberian peninsula, and embarked once again to cross the Bay of Biscay and eventually reach Ireland.
dunroamin
truer words were never spoken.
I am proud of Hungary for standing up to the faschistic (sp?) orders of Merkel, also proud of Poland, who once rode to Hungary’s defeat (in 1683 was it not? and, Baron, you know as none other) so I am rooting for both these countries to throw off the tentacles of the EU and be their own free countries, just as I hope USA remains free, although we have another year or so to wait for that.
There goes the EU.
Buh-bye.
Utter ineptitude & constant duplicity by the EU as from the start of the invasion from the Middle East/Africa & the Indian Sub Continent of those followers of the teaching of Islam has brought about the terrible dangerous confusion we now all face. It is a known fact that the Muslim Brotherhood have been the agitators in bringing about the unprecedented invasion into Europe-it is their aim to divide & conquer-making a good job of it so far. That marxist/socialist led EU commission therefore is no longer fit for purpose, and the sooner this has been grasped and realised by all the European voting public the sooner this issue we now face can be attended.
Btw, I was in Niedzica in the summer – very nice area, and old castle to visit. Also Czorsztyn across the lake (with another castle) is worth visiting – although I imagine that at this time of year, the lake is frozen over and serves more as an ice rink.
Eric Hoffer said in his post WW2 ‘True Believer’ that main task of every large organisation is first and foremost to preserve itself. EU/DDR2.0 will not go down without tears and blood. The procedure started by kafkesque Brussels’ slave masters into ‘undemocratic’ occurrences in Poland will be probably one of the last death throes of the multi-tentacled EU bureaucratic monster, they already set up Wallstreet’s downgrading of Poland’s credit rating from A to BBB+. As was the case in last century – freedom had just enough supporters to prevail and Poles and Hungarians are ready to do it…again:)
Looking forward to 6th Feb, if time allows- there will be banner making (as in merry making ;))
As I see it, the strongest hold the EU has over European governments is the nexus of debts, subsidies, and currency support. Germany and Brussels encouraged countries such as Greece and Italy to spend beyond their means, becoming dependent on continued indirect supports.
This is a tactic of socialism: tax away all surplus income and use the government as the sole source of investment. It gives the government total control without the need for widespread, physical coercion.
The only way countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Greece can maintain their status as independent countries is to tighten their belts, dump the Euro, and exit from the morass of support and cross-subsidy set up by the EU. That’s no so easy when you have pensioners and labor unions rioting in the streets over the withdrawal of some subsidy or another.
The time to do this is now, rather than later. The EU commissars would not hesitate to use military force to enforce the union, just as Lincoln used the full military and economic power of the US to force the Confederacy back into the union (remembering that hostilities were actually initiated by the idiotic Jefferson Davis, giving Lincoln full cover for his military solution).
Fortunately, the EU does not currently have a substantial independent military force, but will become far more dangerous once they acquire one.
It’s not just pensioners and labor unions. Businesses in the crony-capitalism system make BIG money thanks the way the EU has rigged the game. If you’re a businessman with the right connections, and have a large enough enterprise so that your internal bureaucracy can handle the labyrinth of regulatory paperwork put out by Brussels, you can make out like a bandit.
It’s a very shrewd way to control the member states. The national governments are shackled by the ECB to a debt system they can’t free themselves from, not without impoverishing the masses who keep re-electing them. And the business class has no intention of derailing the gravy train.
I don’t see the system changing until the currency collapses. Although Hungary may have a better chance than most of the others — I’ve heard that it has almost no ECB debt.