The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has backed opposition calls for an investigation into potential Russian influence on Polish energy policy.
The Civic Coalition (KO), Poland’s main opposition grouping, on Friday filed a motion to set up an investigative commission to look into a 2014 wiretapping scandal. The scandal, in which the conversations of government ministers were secretly recorded at a Warsaw restaurant, shook the then government, which was led by KO’s backbone party Civic Platform.
KO politicians have expressed concerns that the publicising of the conversations could have been used by Moscow to influence elections in Poland that were subsequently won by the conservative party Law and Justice (PiS), of which Morawiecki is a member.
“Even more broadly, I am in favour of establishing a commission or adequate mechanisms of verifying if and in what way Russia influenced the area of security and energy systems,” Morawiecki said on Friday. “Indeed, the issue needs investigation and verification and I’m definitely in favour of it.”
However, the prime minister did not specify whether he was in favour of setting up a commission in the shape suggested by KO.
Radoslaw Fogiel, the PiS spokesman, told PAP on Friday that “we support a comprehensive explanation of all issues related to Poland’s energy security, all decisions that were made. We want to do it for the years 2007-2022.”
It suggests PiS would like to cover a much broader period, instead of focusing on the 2014 wiretapping scandal.
KO’s motion came in connection with recent media reports that Russia had a hand in the scandal.
According to Donald Tusk, the KO leader and prime minister when the recording scandal broke, Russia may also have influenced Poland’s current energy policy, including a huge increase in Russian coal purchases by Poland.