Conservative Polish PM Vows to Win ‘Culture War’, Defends NATO

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki arrives at the Coun
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawieki has said that “support and protection of the family” are at the heart of his government’s policies, and that if opponents to traditional values want a “culture war”, “then we will win it”.

Prime Minister Morawieki delivered a speech in the lower house of Poland’s parliament — the Sejm — on Tuesday, following the October 13th election returning the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party to power. He spoke in support of the party’s plans to expand pro-family welfare spending and to protect children from “social experiments”, alluding to liberal-progressive interest groups’ demands to teach gender ideology in schools.

“There is no consent for social experiments and ideological revolutions. The future of our children is at stake, and this future should be in the hands of parents because this is normality,” the prime minister said in comments reported by Polish web portal Onet.

“Children are inviolable,” he added and warned that “whoever raises his hand — an ideological hand — raises his hand to the whole community.

“Whoever wants to poison children with ideology, fence off parents, whoever wants to break family ties, enter schools without invitation to write ideological textbooks, puts an explosive charge under Poland, wants to cause a cultural war in Poland.

“There will be no war. I will not allow it. If there are those who seek to wage a culture war, then we will win it. The family will win it because the family is of arch-Polish value.”

“Being Polish means being normal,” the premier added.

The Polish prime minister’s vigorous defence of traditional values and condemnation of the encroachment of progressive ideology echoes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s championing of Christian Europe, with the conservative leader having said in March that there is no place for multiculturalism in Hungary.

“What outrages our opponents the most is the fact that in our Constitution we have written that Hungary has Christian roots; that here there is no place for multiculturalism; that a child has the right to a mother and a father; and that our nation has the right to defend its borders – which are also the borders of the European Union,” Prime Minister Orbán had said.

Prime Minister Morawieki also outlined other key policies in his Tuesday speech — beyond his party’s election pledge to boost pensions and continue with pro-family policies — including spending on infrastructure such as a new airport tipped to be one of the largest in Europe and improving rail connections.

The eastern European country — which celebrated last year being the first post-Soviet bloc country to become a “developed market” — is likely in the position to afford increasing public spending, with Bloomberg reporting that Poland’s economy has grown two to three per cent faster than the eurozone.

Prime Minister Morawieki criticised the neoliberal financial model that had fostered inequality and supported the advancement of public spending within the framework of social conservatism.

“Neoliberals have fuelled a sense of confusion in our value system. Many people were led to believe that the state is a ball and chain,” Mr Morawieki said in comments reported by Reuters.

“We don’t want to be a wealthy state of poor people, or a poor state of rich people. We want to be a wealthy community,” he added.

The Polish government also plans to build a gas pipeline from Norway into order to halt dependence on the Russian supply, with the country having criticised the Nord Stream 2 gas line project from Russia to the EU. Germany is set to double its shipments, and last week, the German parliament made legal changes to ease the completion of the Russian pipeline. During a NATO meeting last year, U.S. President Donald Trump criticised Germany for its dependence on Russian energy, saying Germany was becoming “captive to Russia”.

The Polish leader also gave a strong defence of the heavily American-underwritten NATO, saying: “We will defend the alliance of Europe and the United States.”

The remarks come after the liberal-progressive French president Emmanuel Macron questioned the U.S.’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, claiming the defence union was suffering a “brain death”.

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