Richard Czarnecki is a British-born Polish politician who is a member of the European Parliament for the Law and Justice Party (PiS). In the following interview he discusses Poland’s recent announcement that it would not accept its quota of “refugees” as demanded by the European Union.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
00:00 | “The Talk of the Day”. And in our studio — Ryszard Czarnecki, | |
00:04 | vice-president of the EU Parliament. Good morning Mr Vice-President. | |
00:08 | Good morning to you, good morning ladies and gentlemen. —“There’s a war being waged against Europe | |
00:12 | and we need to answer with appropriate methods,” | |
00:16 | said Jarosław Kaczyński after Saturday’s terrorist | |
00:20 | attack in London. What methods are appropriate? | |
00:24 | What is Jarosław Kaczyński calling for? —Most of all, | |
00:28 | we cannot encourage immigrants, | |
00:32 | immigrants from outside of Europe, mostly Muslims — let’s call the spade a spade — | |
00:36 | to come here. And all sorts of | |
00:40 | decisions at the EU level | |
00:44 | or on the level of the members of the EU, which are encouraging the arrival, right now, | |
00:52 | of people from outside Europe, automatically | |
00:56 | spin the boom of new phases of immigration. I remember I was | |
01:04 | in Tanzania in a delegation for the EU Parliament | |
01:08 | when Chancellor Merkel very hospitably | |
01:12 | opened the gates of Germany. | |
01:16 | And those scenes on TV were, of course, | |
01:20 | they were something like an… — for the inhabitants | |
01:24 | of Africa — an encouragement: Let’s go to Europe! | |
01:28 | You can’t do that! — You are talking now about political methods, but Jarosław Kaczyński said, | |
01:32 | “…with appropriate political methods, but also different ones, | |
01:36 | if necessary.” Well that corresponds with the words of British PM Theresa May, who | |
01:40 | said that the patience of British people is almost exhausted. | |
01:44 | I’m trying to imagine how such | |
01:48 | a war, with terrorism, waged not only with political methods, | |
01:53 | Might look like; because the main problem isn’t | |
01:57 | the fact if the Islamic State has one town more or less | |
02:01 | in the Middle East, but the problem is what is going on in the streets of European cities. | |
02:05 | Therefore, sacrificing some liberties, a permanent curfew? | |
02:09 | How to win such a war inside the EU? | |
02:13 | Great Britain happens to be a country | |
02:17 | that has at its disposal good special forces, which, | |
02:21 | it has to be said, have stopped a number of terrorist attacks, | |
02:25 | among them also those whose perpetrators could have been | |
02:29 | people called “lone wolves”, who organized the attack by themselves. | |
02:33 | British special forces are rated better than | |
02:37 | the intelligence services in some countries on the continent; however, | |
02:41 | for years Great Britain also accepted, for the sake of peace | |
02:45 | and cohesion, the activities of radical imams on their | |
02:49 | territory, in mosques in British towns. | |
02:53 | And those radical imams were | |
02:57 | cranking up young Muslims | |
03:01 | who — often — were born in the UK and Northern Ireland, and those attackers | |
03:09 | are being recruited precisely from among those people —And suggestions are appearing in other | |
03:13 | EU countries that the radical imams need to be deported. | |
03:17 | Yes, of course, and also we need | |
03:21 | to watch them closely; fortunately this isn’t a Polish problem, because | |
03:25 | Poland was, is, and will be conducting a wise immigration policy, | |
03:29 | following the rule of: “Option ZERO”: Stop, zero | |
03:33 | Islamic immigrants from outside Europe, and Muslim immigrants in general. | |
03:37 | However, other countries, well, brought about the situation | |
03:42 | where those trained | |
03:46 | — in the territory of the Islamic State, in Syria, Iraq | |
03:50 | — young people with French, Belgian, Dutch, British | |
03:54 | German citizenship, are coming back to Europe, and | |
03:58 | a vast majority of the attackers | |
04:02 | who committed those attacks, either in Paris or | |
04:06 | in Brussels or other European agglomerations, all those | |
04:10 | attackers, or at least a large majority of them, | |
04:14 | were trained on the territory of the Islamic State; they went through training, | |
04:18 | then they went back to Europe, and somehow the intelligence services couldn’t | |
04:22 | follow them. Those are very obvious sins of dereliction. | |
04:26 | We, Poland, are learning from other countries’ mistakes; | |
04:30 | we are drawing conclusions from other countries’ mistakes; | |
04:34 | and we certainly won’t open our doors | |
04:38 | to Muslim immigrants at all. | |
04:42 | We can support the refugees there, where they are, | |
04:46 | which also recently was mentioned by former US President | |
04:50 | Barack Obama, disagreeing somewhat with | |
04:54 | his hostess for his visit, Chancellor Merkel. —A very important subject in domestic politics, | |
04:58 | a very important subject in European politics, but moving to | |
05:02 | a higher level, to the UN: | |
05:06 | Poland recently became an non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. | |
05:10 | What possibilities does this open up for us? | |
05:14 | How can we really influence what is going on | |
05:18 | globally, thanks to that opportunity? —It’s a great success. | |
05:23 | For comparison, I’m going to — because most media don’t mention it — | |
05:27 | well, six years ago | |
05:31 | our neighbors | |
05:35 | in the new EU, Hungary and Slovenia | |
05:39 | lost a fight for non-permanent membership | |
05:43 | on the UN Security Council. Before that | |
05:47 | the Czech Republic and Slovakia also lost this fight, | |
05:51 | and from the countries in the larger EU | |
05:55 | in the voting, in New York, at the UN forum, | |
05:59 | Italy and Greece failed as well. | |
06:03 | The more we should appreciate Polish success, and also the scale of this success, | |
06:07 | because never before has a country received in a vote | |
06:11 | such a large number of votes. | |
06:15 | 190 is a huge number. —So, while being happy for that success, | |
06:19 | I’m trying to translate it into real things, because right now, when | |
06:23 | I read the comments in the papers today, I got the impression that we only did it to put pressure | |
06:27 | on Russia in order to get the wrecked Tupolev back [in which gov’t leaders crashed in Russia]. | |
06:31 | Above all, Poland, which is very important, will be | |
06:35 | an ambassador for the countries in our region | |
06:39 | of Eastern Europe, or the New EU, and | |
06:43 | let me remind you that from the New EU | |
06:47 | 13 countries entered, among them 11 from our region | |
06:51 | in the last 13 years, but caution, in the situation, where | |
06:55 | in that group of five of the permanent members | |
06:59 | of the UN Security Council, after Brexit | |
07:04 | from the EU members only France will be left, so Poland, | |
07:08 | through those 24 months 2018-2019, | |
07:12 | will also be even more a representative of the EU. | |
07:16 | This also gives us larger possibilities to represent | |
07:20 | the New EU and the entire EU in New York at the UN, | |
07:24 | but also to play some diplomatic-political games | |
07:28 | here, in situ, on the old continent, in Europe. | |
07:32 | However, of course, | |
07:36 | already the fact of our membership caused reactions | |
07:40 | very quickly; Washington as well as Moscow | |
07:44 | turned to Poland for urgent political consultations, probably | |
07:48 | at the level of the assistant ministers of foreign affairs. I’m talking about it because | |
07:52 | this shows that Poland is becoming a player, | |
07:56 | which totally refutes the BS. —That means that the further — | |
08:00 | …the stupid, idiotic propaganda theses of the opposition that Poland | |
08:04 | is isolated, that Poland is meaningless. —But perhaps it means that the further, | |
08:08 | but it’s 190 votes —Perhaps it’s because from far away you see differently than from close up. | |
08:12 | You see differently, because the difference in the way Poland was treated during this vote — | |
08:16 | this success in the UN that you are talking about — | |
08:20 | and how it is painted | |
08:24 | by some of our partners from the EU, | |
08:28 | Well, is very big. —Well, in Europe there is | |
08:32 | a certain war, not only the real war with Islam, | |
08:36 | but also within Europe a war between the leftist, liberal circles, | |
08:40 | with the conservative, traditional circles, | |
08:44 | which defend certain values, and of course | |
08:48 | within that war the target is | |
08:52 | also sometimes Poland, which is ruled by | |
08:56 | a party that respects traditional values: Christian | |
09:00 | and patriotic. But the fact that the vice-president of | |
09:04 | the European Commission, Mr Timmermans was for years an activist | |
09:09 | of the Dutch Left, of the Labour Party, is often somehow | |
09:13 | forgotten by commentators, and it’s worth reminding people of. | |
09:17 | Are we going to have a new Prime Minister? Mateusz Morawiecki is supposed to replace Beata Szydło, | |
09:21 | So Rzeczpospolita [a newspaper] speculates. And Beata Szydło | |
09:25 | will supposedly become the president of the Parliament, replacing Marek Kuchciński. | |
09:29 | I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t think that | |
09:33 | these types of changes | |
09:37 | were being discussed right now by the leadership of PiS [Law and Justice party]. | |
09:41 | But the propositions that the Polish people will hear | |
09:45 | during the party congress in July — must be already be | |
09:49 | under discussion. Do you know anything about that? | |
09:53 | We want to present a proposal for Poland and for the Polish people, | |
09:57 | not for the political class, because | |
10:01 | in reality our | |
10:05 | “examiners” are Polish taxpayers, Polish voters, | |
10:09 | and independent of the fact that the opposition, | |
10:13 | also unfortunately — and I’m saying it as the vice-president of the EU Parliament — | |
10:17 | …so the opposition in the West in the EU | |
10:21 | also paints our homeland | |
10:25 | in very dark colors, and often in | |
10:29 | an unjust, unfair and false manner. | |
10:33 | We — are going forward without paying attention to it, and we will try to represent | |
10:37 | very specific propositions, which like those | |
10:41 | made up until now, during the eighteen months of our government, | |
10:45 | for a Kowalski and a Nowak [typical Polish names], | |
10:49 | their families will live better and Poland will be stronger on the international stage, | |
10:53 | which has been proven by the vote in the UN. —Since you underline | |
10:57 | the word “taxpayer” so much, I’m guessing that those who | |
11:01 | speculate that perhaps the economic subjects | |
11:06 | we’ll be hearing during that congress and new propositions will surface are right. | |
11:10 | It’s a part of the life of Polish people, you might say… —Ryszard Czarnecki, vice-president of the | |
11:14 | EU Parliament, was the guest of Signs of the Day on Channel One on the radio. | |
11:18 | Thank you very much. —Thank you, and have a good day. | |
11:22 | 7:30am. This has been “Talk of the day”. |
Well, Poland has a grip on the worldly things that truly matter to those who know their history and national aspirations.
Well done to Poland, hope to hear a lot more of your leadership within the EU from here on in.