A woman walks among the closed shops of an empty shopping center in Warsaw, Poland, on Nov 7, 2020 on the first day of the new partial lockdown. (JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP)

The Polish government is getting increasingly upset with European Union efforts to add conditions to budget funding, but the issue isn’t enough for them to consider quitting the bloc, a deputy minister said.

Government officials in Warsaw have long said that talk of a “Polexit” is merely “political fiction,” even as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said this month that being in the bloc “sometimes benefits Poland, and sometimes it doesn’t”

While Hungary and Poland had disagreements with the EU over rule-of-law issues, officials in Brussels have struggled to discipline them as each can veto punishments against the other. That changed with a recent initiative tying development cash to rule-of-law standards, prompting the pair to threaten to block the EU’s seven-year budget, including 750 billion euros (US$900 million) of pandemic aid.
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“Poles are wise and they don’t blame the whole EU,” Waldemar Buda, deputy minister in charge of EU funds, told TVN24 private television on Sunday. “They understand that it’s only a group of leaders who are absolutely liberal and left-wing and impose their views on all countries.”

Government officials in Warsaw have long said that talk of a “Polexit” is merely “political fiction,” even as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said this month that being in the bloc “sometimes benefits Poland, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Looming Deadline

With a deadline looming to approve the spending plan, Hungary and Poland wager the EU will bend. The countries, which stand to receive more than 180 billion euros in the coming years, call the new rules an attack on their sovereignty.

But despite the health crisis and last-minute wrangling over a Brexit deal with the UK, the EU is adamant it won’t cave, and has ratcheted up the rhetoric in a similar fashion. EU government envoys in Brussels will discuss the stalemate on Monday.

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France’s ambassador to the bloc warned the quarrel could signal a “fundamental rupture” that raises questions about the EU’s very future, according to people present at a meeting of envoys in Brussels last week.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and officials from Poland’s government revel in the role of standing up to what they call EU bullying, using a news conference in Budapest last week to cement their stance on the EU budget. But weaknesses in their position are becoming apparent.

France has raised the prospect of reorganizing the virus-relief money to exclude Hungary and Poland. Further delays in the budget would lead to the bloc operating under an emergency monthly budget, with the rule-of-law conditions still applying.

The domestic situation is getting more precarious too, with majorities in both Hungary and Poland backing EU membership, which has helped transform their economies through funding that far exceeds what they pay in.

Poland has been racked by protests over harsher abortion rules, while business groups including banks and employers’ associations sent protest letter to Morawiecki Monday, saying the veto plan would leave Poland “with no partners and no money.”

“I hope the EU won’t upset Poles as much as it did in Britain’s case, because it actually ended badly,” Buda said. “But I think Poles are wiser and they won’t let it happen.”