No matter how much Poland contributes to Ukraine war aid, the country will not receive any European Union recovery funds, said Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian politician and leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE Group) in the European Parliament.
Verhofstadt, who has long opposed Poland’s government, issued the threat on social media. While Poland has fulfilled EU milestones set by Brussels to unlock National Recovery Plan funds, the EU has issued new milestones in what appears to be an effort to continuously move the goalposts and interfere in Poland’s upcoming elections in favor of the left-wing opposition.
In 2017, we heard from Verhofstadt when shortly after Poland’s Independence March he named the participants of the patriotic demonstration “60,000 fascists, Nazis and white supremacists” in a forum of the European Parliament.
Verhofstadt is also very keen on voicing his opinion about Poland on social media. Let us note that despite the unprecedented support Poland provides to war refugees from Ukraine, it still has not received any new funds from the EU.
Now, the Belgian politician has appealed to not unfreeze the EU recovery funds as well.
He is currently attending Campus Polska, a left-wing conference, where he appears together with Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski and Radosław Sikorski, the former Polish foreign minister. They will discuss “a Europe of shared healthcare standards, law mechanisms, security policies, protection of civil rights, and energy.”
Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski bragged earlier that during his talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen he had received confirmation “that Brussels will impose additional demands on the Polish government before it receives due funds from the National Recovery Plan.”
What is interesting, the very same Polish politician in 2018 said in an interview for Radio ZET: “Thanks to our efforts, those funds have not disappeared but are frozen instead. If we win the next elections, those funds will get unfrozen.”
