Oto ciekawy fragment tekstu z prestiżowego Foreign Affairs, nawołującego Unię Europejską do interwencji nad Wisłą
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY
Given the number of daunting challenges Europe faces—a potential British exit from the European Union; the arrival of large numbers of refugees and migrants; and the slowly festering eurozone crisis among them—it would be easy for European leaders to overlook Poland’s internal battle over constitutional politics. Doing so, however, would be a profound mistake. If the European Union fails to defend democracy and the rule of law in Poland, as it did in Hungary, it will lose credibility as a union of pluralist democracies and risk encouraging a wave of democratic backsliding in other member states.
Of course, as the European Union’s flawed record in Hungary has shown, protecting democracy in Poland will not be easy. This is mostly because the Union lacks adequate legal tools to address democratic backsliding. Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty does enable EU member governments, acting unanimously, to strip another state of EU voting rights for serious and persistent violations of the EU’s fundamental values including democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights—but with Poland and Hungary both drifting toward authoritarianism, Article 7 proceedings against either state would surely fail, as each country would shield the other from a unanimous vote. What is more, because European Council President Donald Tusk is a former Polish prime minister and longstanding enemy of Kaczynski, the PiS would have an easy time characterizing EU action against Poland as an opportunistic play by its domestic rivals.
Nevertheless, the European Union is not powerless to bring about change in Poland. Indeed, many of the political obstacles to EU action against Hungary do not exist with respect to Poland. Some leaders of the powerful European People’s Party (EPP), a pan-European coalition of center-right parties of which Fidesz is a member, for example, have shielded Orban from criticism within the European Union. But PiS does not have the same advantage—the party is not a member of the EPP, and Kaczynski has fewer supporters in foreign capitals than Orbán does. That should make it easier for EU leaders to agree to act in the Polish case.
całość TUTAJ:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/poland/2016-01-07/europes-autocracy-problem
