Eurasia Press & News
In September 2021, the Polish government declared a state of emergency along its border with Belarus, which is also the European Union’s eastern frontier, in response to a large influx of migrants from countries including Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The route and timing of the migrants’ journey into Europe was not random: They were assisted by the Belarusian authorities, led by the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994. Warsaw went on to accuse Minsk of engaging in “hybrid warfare” backed by Russia.
Both the humanitarian crisis on Poland’s border, where migrants were left stranded in the freezing cold throughout the winter, and the wider geopolitical context have captured the international community’s attention. With tensions between NATO and Russia already high over Ukraine, the Polish-Belarusian border could become another hotspot in the conflict between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the West. Lukashenko just used a purported military buildup at the border by Poland and the Baltic states as a pretext for upcoming joint military exercises with Russia that many observers believe could be a cover for prepositioning more Russian troops for a potential invasion of Ukraine.
Yet while Western leaders have expressed their solidarity with Poland over the border crisis, the situation there should not serve as a distraction from other worrying developments within Poland relating to the rule of law and foreign media ownership.
Since the socially conservative Law and Justice party, or PiS, came to power in 2015, it has strengthened its grip on the country’s institutions, including the judiciary and the public media. Although international actors including the European Union and the United States have repeatedly voiced their alarm about these developments, there is concern now that these preoccupations could take a back seat to the crisis on the border and the wider geopolitical situation with Russia. To prevent this from happening, Warsaw’s Western allies must find ways to support Poland’s security, while continuing to oppose democratic backsliding.
There is broad agreement in Warsaw and among its partners that the situation at the Polish-Belarusian border constitutes a security threat, not just to Poland, but—insofar as it is seen as part of Putin’s efforts to destabilize the West—also to the EU as a whole. This narrative has been promoted by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of the ruling PiS party, who in a tweet on Nov. 21 accused Lukashenko of launching a “hybrid war” against the EU, while calling the border crisis “the greatest attempt to destabilize Europe in 30 years.” Morawiecki also blamed Moscow for the surge in migrants at Poland’s eastern border, an accusation that fits in with Poland’s longstanding hawkishness on Russia, which predates the current PiS government. It also reflects Warsaw’s commitment to NATO, which has included not only meeting the alliance’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, but more recently, under PiS-allied President Andrzej Duda, exceeding it.
The EU has echoed the Polish authorities’ narrative about the border situation representing a deliberate and premeditated threat to its security. “This is not a migration crisis. This is the attempt of an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize its democratic neighbors,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, in a speech at the European Parliament on Nov. 23. In that same speech, she underlined the bloc’s solidarity with Poland, as well as with Latvia and Lithuania, which have experienced a similar surge in migration via Belarus. Von der Leyen also outlined the practical steps the commission has been taking to address the situation, including humanitarian support and diplomatic outreach to the migrants’ countries of origin. In December, the EU adopted its fifth package of sanctions on Belarus over continued human rights abuses and the instrumentalization of migrants.
While Western leaders have expressed their solidarity with Poland over the border crisis, the situation there should not serve as a distraction from other worrying developments within Poland.Yet this external threat comes on top of what the EU and the U.S. have identified as threats from within Poland, which are not only undermining the country’s democracy, but also threatening European and trans-Atlantic values, namely the rule of law and media freedom. Both of these stem from the PiS leadership’s efforts to strengthen its grip on the country’s institutions and silence criticism.
The European Commission has long warned of the threat to the rule of law posed by the PiS government’s judiciary reforms. The dispute began shortly after PiS came to power in 2015 with its takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal, which reviews whether legislation is constitutional, and has since extended to its changes to the Supreme Court. As with Hungary, however, the commission has struggled to get Poland to retract these changes, despite resorting to the so-called Article 7 procedure, which could in theory result in the suspension of Warsaw’s EU voting rights, as well as cases against Poland in the EU Court of Justice and, most recently, a new “conditionality regulation” linking funds from the EU budget to member states’ respect for the rule of law. So far, though, these efforts’ impact has been limited.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has repeatedly spoken out against what it sees as PiS’s worrying actions against foreign-owned media—specifically the private television broadcaster TVN, which is owned by the U.S.-based Discovery Group and has been critical of PiS. Nevertheless, in December 2021, PiS lawmakers pushed through a bill that would force Discovery to sell its majority stake in TVN. The move was the culmination of longstanding calls by PiS politicians to “repolonize” foreign-owned media, which they blame for critical coverage of the government. The bill was criticized by the U.S., with Bix Aliu, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Warsaw, calling it “extremely disappointing” and urging Duda to veto it “to protect free speech and business”. Duda did end up vetoing the bill on Dec. 27, sparing Poland an outright confrontation with Washington, its key military ally on which Warsaw has long counted for protection against Russia within the NATO framework. However, the bill was a reminder of PiS’s attitude toward independent media outlets, including foreign-owned ones.
These two enduring, controversial issues—the threat to both the rule of law and media pluralism—deserve continued attention from Poland’s Western partners. The U.S., EU and other international partners should continue to monitor, speak out against and, where necessary, take action to oppose further backsliding within Poland as a result of the PiS government’s actions. In doing so, they should distinguish between these internal issues and the regional security context—Russian’s growing assertiveness in general, and the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border in particular—by pushing back on the former and providing diplomatic, military and humanitarian support on the latter. In this way, they will be supporting not only Poland’s security, but also its continued respect for key democratic values.
