Premier chides EU for spending too much time on Poland

“But these can not be taken for granted, we have learned our lesson the hard way”, he added, calling for an open discussion to protect them in times of change.

As he sits in his Warsaw office, puffing on a cigarette, Mr Lis, long the subject of a Law and Justice boycott, accuses the new government of orchestrating a purge of the public media using a new law that will give the government powers to hire and fire senior journalists.

“The downgrade reflects our view that Poland’s system of institutional checks and balances has been eroded significantly as the independence and effectiveness of key institutions, such as the constitutional court and public broadcasting, is being weakened by various legislative measures initiated since the October 2015 election”, the ratings agency said in a statement.

EU President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, criticized the inquiry on Monday, saying after talks with country’s president Andrzej Duda that there are other ways of proceeding instead of conducting an investigation.

Poland’s prime minister has rebuffed European Union criticism of her government’s media and judicial reforms.

SNP MEP Alyn Smith has alerted us to a debate which takes place in the European Parliament in Strasbourg tomorrow. But he also said that the agency might have believed in the negative image of Poland put forward by PiS during the electoral campaign. He underlined that “our only aim is to clarify whether European values are at risk” and stressed that “no-one wants a preventive sentence for Poland”.

She said the furore over changes to the constitution were “political not legal” and that Law and Justice was undoing questionable changes made by the previous government and making the body more democratic.

Mr. Tusk, the highest-ranking eastern European in EU history, used his status as the bloc’s consensus builder to urge politicians in Poland and the west back away from “hysterical comments”.

The constitutional court reforms – replacing some of its judges and changing the voting laws – were necessary to remedy unconstitutional decisions by the outgoing government, Szydlo said, adding that the dispute this had generated was a purely domestic political issue.

PM Szydło (L) met with Polish MEPs.

“The politics is polarised, but if the government fails to deliver on these promises, then that is when the trouble will really begin”, says Prof Aleks Szczerbiak, professor of politics at the University of Sussex.

He said he wants North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to make its presence “as permanent as possible” in Poland.