What’s the Greatest Threat to Poland?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2018
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The EU’s launched the ‘nuclear option’ against Poland, the first time it’s triggered the disciplinary measure in its history. They say recent changes to the legal system mean there is a serious threat to the rule of law and as a punishment, Poland could lose its voting rights in the European Union. The ruling party say this is an attack on Poland and that the EU should not be telling them what to do. The government says that actually their judiciary is threatened by the legacy of communism which is why they have made the legal reforms. They also say they’re being singled out by the EU for their refusal to take refugees, which they claim pose a threat to their country. If you believe the government, there are lots of threats to Poland, but what is actually being threatened and is there something far greater at stake? What is the greatest threat to Poland?
Presenter: Ruth Alexander Producer: Phoebe Keane
(Photo: Right-wing nationalist protesters burn the European Union flag in 2015. Credit: Natalia Dobryszycka/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me Ruth Alexander. |
| 0:10.0 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news. |
| 0:18.0 | On a chilly evening in November, hundreds of people pulled on their woolly hats and crammed into the |
| 0:27.9 | square in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw. Waving Polish and European flags, |
| 0:35.0 | the crowd was good-natured, but serious. |
| 0:38.0 | Three courts, they chanted. |
| 0:44.0 | The protesters say that Poland is under threat, |
| 0:51.0 | that its populist right-wing government is undermining the country's |
| 0:55.4 | democratic values. The European Union agrees, condemning what it calls a systemic threat to the rule of law in Poland. |
| 1:05.0 | But that's just one perspective. |
| 1:07.0 | Others say it's immigrants that threaten Poland or old elites from the communist past or even the EU itself by meddling in a |
| 1:17.4 | sovereign state domestic affairs. In this inquiry we're going to disentangle all of these arguments and bring clarity to the situation. |
| 1:30.0 | We want to know what's the greatest threat to Poland. |
| 1:39.0 | Part 1 Stranger Danger Danger. Danger. |
| 1:44.0 | I'm not necessarily |
| 1:48.0 | Beo and the Premier of Coppache |
| 1:50.0 | as we have to be enough |
| 1:51.0 | the chances of the eligible immigrants. This is the former Polish Prime Minister Beyatashidwe in Parliament, |
| 1:59.8 | defiantly reneging on an EU agreement to take in asylum seekers. |
| 2:05.0 | What are you shanatous Godi? |
| 2:08.0 | What are you the provadis of the polls that will be brown? |
| 2:12.0 | Do you want to make Poland defenceless? She said. |
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