opinion poll
Half of Poles view Warsaw’s Germany policy negatively
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Several actions by his government have recently caused irritation in German-Polish relations. photo
© Radek Pietruszka/PAP/dpa
Half of Poles reject their government’s current course towards Germany, only 18.7 percent support it. Recently, several actions by the PiS government had caused irritation.
According to a survey, a good half of Poles are dissatisfied with the Germany policy of the national-conservative PiS government. This was the result of a survey published on Saturday by the SW Research institute on behalf of the daily newspaper “Rzeczpospolita”. Accordingly, 50.5 percent of those surveyed rate the policy of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government towards Berlin negatively. In contrast, 18.7 percent endorse Morawiecki’s course, and another 30.8 percent said they had no opinion on the subject.
Several actions by the PiS government had recently caused irritation in German-Polish relations. Ten days ago, Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) and her Polish colleague Mariusz Blaszczak agreed that German Patriot air defense systems should be stationed in the NATO country to protect Polish airspace. Shortly thereafter, Blaszczak duped Berlin by proposing to station these systems in western Ukraine instead. PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski had previously brought the idea into play. The 73-year-old is currently increasingly using anti-German tones in order to win over voters.
At the beginning of October, Poland had also demanded the equivalent of more than 1.3 trillion euros in compensation in a diplomatic note to Berlin for the damage suffered as a result of the Second World War and the German occupation. The federal government rejects any claims for reparations. For them, the question is closed with the 2+4 treaty on the foreign policy aspects of German unity.