Representatives of the ruling coalition repeatedly emphasized that the greatest success of the Polish presidency in the Council of the EU (RUE) was the implementation of the SAFE program, under which states could apply for loans for armaments from a fund with a total pool of €150 billion. It now turns out, however, that this may be one of the greatest embarrassments of Donald Tusk’s camp, as the European Parliament (EP) has just submitted a request to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to annul the regulation, with the reason being opposition to the procedure by which it was adopted. “The matter was simply handled politically in a sloppy and unreliable way,” says MEP Michał Dworczyk to “GPC”. Meanwhile, Prof. Ryszard Legutko stresses that “the Polish presidency turned out to be a failure in many dimensions.”
The SAFE program was proposed by Ursula von der Leyen in March this year, and already in May EU ministers reached an agreement on its shape. It assumes that member states may apply for loans for defense-related expenditures, with a total pool of €150 billion allocated for this purpose. However, there is one condition to be met, which was heavily criticized by the Polish opposition. According to the adopted rules, a so-called European preference is to apply, meaning that around 65% of the funds’ value should go to suppliers from EU states (primarily Germany and France), while only 35% can be spent on purchases outside this area.
Representatives of Donald Tusk’s government have repeatedly claimed that the adoption and implementation of such an initiative was the greatest success of the Polish presidency. Now, however, it turns out that the subject the December 13 coalition boasted about is sparking major controversies in Europe. The portal Euractiv.com reported that on Wednesday the European Parliament filed a motion with the CJEU to annul the SAFE regulation, the reason being the bypassing of the EP in the legislative process.
“This undermines democratic legitimacy in the eyes of the public, and no parliament in the world would accept this,” EU press services pointed out. At the same time, the EP calls for maintaining the effects of the regulation until a substitute act is developed.
“Codzienna” asked Michał Dworczyk, PiS MEP and former Deputy Minister of National Defense, for comment on the matter.
“We are dealing with internal rivalry among EU institutions. On one side are representatives of the European Parliament, on the other the European Commission, and on the third the Council of the EU. I am saddened by the fact that due to the ambitions of individual officials, initiatives important from the point of view of security may suffer. I want to emphasize right away that I am not an excessive supporter of the SAFE program, and many times together with other members of our group in the European Parliament we pointed out doubts as to its form. However, since it has already been implemented and there is a chance that some Polish initiatives will receive support, torpedoing it now would be very irresponsible,” says Michał Dworczyk in an interview with “GPC”.
He adds that the current situation is the result of political sloppiness.
“The Council of the EU decided to adopt SAFE, bypassing the legislative steps provided for by the regulations, in which the European Parliament was supposed to participate. The matter was simply handled politically in a sloppy and unreliable way. Combined with the ambitions of some officials, this situation has arisen, which we are witnessing today,” stresses the PiS MEP.
Prof. Ryszard Legutko, an EU affairs expert, also shared his opinion with us. “The European Parliament is fighting for power, it wants to expand it, and hence this kind of reaction. The policy of the CJEU is to support sister institutions in their pursuit of expanding competences, and therefore I expect that it will side with the submitted motion,”assesses Prof. Legutko.
Read more in the weekend edition of “Gazeta Polska Codziennie”!