EU officials made it clear that it will not hesitate to start a legal process against the Polish government for threatening its common values by passing a law on a state-controlled public media.
Guenther Oettinger, the German Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, is the leading EU official urging the EU Commission to start a legal action against Poland. The Commission has expressed concern over the new media law and seeks an explanation from the Polish government, seeing the law as infringing on the EU's principles on media freedom.
Last week, Polish MPs have approved a law giving the government direct power to appoint managers of state-run radio and television stations. It was introduced by the Law and Justice Party (PiS), a ruling conservative nationalist party. According to Euronews, under the new law, the treasury minister has the power to appoint and fire public radio and television station managers without any contest by the National Broadcasting Council. When the law comes into effect, it will also require current media station managers and supervisory board members to be fired from their positions. It only needs to be signed by Polish president, Andrzej Duda, to come into force.
The new law was immediately met with strong criticism from EU officials and media rights organizations such as the Association of European Journalists, the European Broadcasting Union, and Reporters Without Borders. According to critics, the law undermines free speech and is part of PiS plans to gradually gain control over the media. In protest of the new law, the directors of four channels of Poland's public service television, TVP, resigned on Saturday. The BBC reports that Polish news website, Dziennik, reveals them as: Jerzy Kapuscinski of TVP2, Katarzyna Janowska of TVP Kultura, Piotr Radziszewski of TVP1, and Tomasz Sygut of Television Information Agency.
The Polish government reacted by defending the new media law as fair. According to Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, the government initiated this reform because it wants to "cure" the state of its illnesses "so it can recover again."
According to Reuters, Oettinger cites that EU officials can apply the EU "rule of law mechanism," adopted in 2015. This means that the EU Commission has the prerogative to put pressure on any member state to change any policy the EU considers as a "systemic threat" to its fundamental values. It will issue a warning and proposals to changes in the law. If Poland does not respond accordingly, the commission can begin a legal process which could ultimately lead to withdrawing Poland's inherent voting rights in the EU Council, the organization that groups together all the member states' head of state.
In an interview with German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS), on Sunday, Oettinger remarks that there's "a lot to be said for activating the mechanism on the rule of law and putting Warsaw under supervision."
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker placed the issue as a top priority to be discussed in the commission's next meeting on January 13.
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