Chancellor Olaf Scholz on his inaugural visit to Warsaw – after Paris and Brussels his third stop since the election on Wednesday.
The Airbus 340 “Theodor Heuss” takes off almost punctually at 4:09 p.m. with the Chancellor and around 50 companions – including two dozen journalists, his closest circle of advisors, experts on relations with Poland and the EU, economic advisers such as State Secretary Jörg Kukies.
The “Theodor Heuss” lands at Frédéric Chopin Airport shortly after 5 p.m., and the German ambassador Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven picks up Scholz on the tarmac. The column takes just under 30 minutes to the State Chancellery of the Polish Prime Minister. There Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (53) receives his German counterpart with military honors.
A one-to-one conversation with the prime minister is then planned in his office (15 minutes). Then advisors from both heads of government join the group and talk for about an hour on the topics that are particularly close to Chancellor Scholz’s heart: the controversial judicial reforms in Poland, against which the EU Commission has initiated legal proceedings. And: The still explosive situation on the Polish-Belarusian border.
Relations between Poland and Germany have been tarnished for years by new laws that the Polish government has passed since it took office in 2016 to weaken the position of the constitutional court, install judges loyal to the government across the country and establish Justice Minister Ziobro as a kind of all-powerful people’s prosecutor who can initiate, revoke or reopen criminal proceedings and judgments at will.
After the talks, the heads of government drove to the center of the city to lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown soldier.
Photo: JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP
“data-zoom-src =” https://bilder.bild.de/fotos/der-deutsche-kanzler-und-der-polnic-ministerpraesident-auf-einer-pressekonferenz-am-abend-fff65453f9694d7481db37a49b758dfc-78524410/Bild/ 2.bild.jpg “/> The German Chancellor and the Polish Prime Minister at a press conference in the eveningPhoto: JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP
Right next to the memorial stands a memorial column for the victims of the Smolensk air accident, in which President Lech Kaczynski died in 2010 together with dozens of state and army leaders – a trauma for Poles to this day. And the occasion for ever new conspiracy theories against Russia, in which the ruling party PiS and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the brother of the late president, play a major role.
Close-to-government protest against Scholz
The meeting is overshadowed by posters hanging in central places in Warsaw. To see: Olaf Scholz on his election poster “Chancellor for Germany”, supplemented by the demand “Reparations for Poland”.
Another motive calls for Germany to exercise justice in its commitment to the rule of law in Poland “in the reparation of German crimes in the Second World War”.
The posters are distributed by the PiS-loyal artist Wojcech Korkuc, who is allegedly sponsored by the ruling party PiS and repeatedly attracted attention through propaganda in favor of the government. He himself denies having designed the posters. The Polish government also denies any involvement.
Problem: one of the posters bears the logo of the Polish Ministry of Culture …
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