PiS-sed off in Poland

The palace intrigue emanating from the Polish government over the past week was not limited to Warsaw. It extended to both the Council’s Justus Lipsius building and the European Parliament.

First, the Polish government starting telling other governments and journalists that it wanted Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a veteran Polish MEP from Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party, to replace Tusk at the head of the European Council. Other governments weren’t buying it and the European People’s Party issued a declaration in support of Tusk.

Then Poland’s Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski picked a fight with the country’s former permanent representative to the EU, Marek Prawda, who was sacked by Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) government and rehired by the European Commission.

Waszczykowski all but called Prawda a traitor for sharing reports within the EU critical of Poland’s judicial reforms, and told local television that “If he [Prawda] was a classical ambassador we would have initiated the persona non grata procedure.”

It’s that kind of volatile performance that has some in the Polish government worried that Waszczykowski is not up to navigating a global foreign policy terrain that is littered with landmines called Trump, Brexit and Russia.

The solution that’s been floated to Playbook is to replace Waszczykowski with Saryusz-Wolski.

That would make Saryusz-Wolski the latest Brussels politician, following high-profile examples like Martin Schulz (candidate to be German chancellor), Andrzej Duda (Polish president) and Alfonso Dastis (Spanish foreign minister) to get a political promotion back home.

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