Polish leader's
anti-gay stance threatens
EU voting rights
Nicholas Watt,
guardian.co.uk from the Web, October 25, 2005
Poland could lose its EU voting
rights if its newly elected president continues to oppose gay rights and seeks
to introduce the death penalty, the European Commission warned yesterday.
In a shot across the bows of arch-conservative Lech Kaczynski, the commission
declared that all member states must abide by EU rules which protect minorities
and block the death penalty.
Failure to comply could trigger a special process under the Treaty of Nice which
deprives errant member states of their voting rights in ministerial meetings.
"We are going to follow the situation very attentively," the principal
commission spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said yesterday
The commission intervened after Mr. Kaczynski, the Law and Justice party
candidate, was confirmed as the winner of Sunday's second round in the Polish
presidential election with 54% of the vote. Donald Tusk, a more moderate
conservative from the pro-market Civic Platform party, won 46% of the vote.
The election cleared the way for a strengthened Law and Justice party, headed by
the new president's identical twin brother Jaroslaw, to launch formal coalition
talks with Civic Platform. The two parties won a conservative majority in
parliamentary elections on September 25.
European diplomats will be watching the negotiations carefully after the success
of the new president, who made his name as mayor of Warsaw. A strongly
conservative Catholic, he refused to allow gay pride marches and supports the
death penalty.
Friso Roscam Abbing, the European commission's justice spokesman, warned the new
president he must abide by article 6 of the Treaty of Nice, which says that all
member states must protect minority rights and not impose the death penalty.
A failure to comply could trigger article 7, which allows the EU to deprive a
member state of voting rights. This allows voting rights to be withdrawn
if a member state is in "serious breach" of its obligations on human rights.
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