The Polish Foreign Ministry summoned French Ambassador to Poland Frederic Billet in response to President Macron’s characterisation of the Polish prime minister as a “far-right anti-Semite who bans LGBT people.”
“As a result of assertions by the French president in an interview with Le Parisian, Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau decided to summon the French ambassador,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Lukasz Jasina wrote in a tweet Friday.
Earlier Friday, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller dismissed Macron’s characterization of Morawiecki as an anti-Semite as an “incomprehensible” “lie” uttered out of election campaign-related emotion.
Macron lashed out at Morawiecki Thursday in his interview with Le Parisian, and along with his comments about the Polish leader’s alleged anti-Semitism and homophobia recalled Warsaw’s “arbitrary dismissal of many judges” in recent years.
The French president also accused Morawiecki “interfering” in his country’s ongoing presidential election campaign, and pointing to the supposed similarity of views of the Polish Law and Justice politician and Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist conservative National Rally Party.
“He supports Marine Le Pen, whom he has hosted several times. Let’s not be naïve, he wants to help her before the election,” Macron said.
The spat between Macron and Morawiecki began on Monday, after the Polish premier slammed the French president for his ongoing talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the crisis in Ukraine.
“How many times have you negotiated with Putin and what have you achieved?” Morawiecki asked in remarks to reporters. “We do not negotiate with criminals. Criminals have to be fought against. Nobody negotiated with Hitler. Would you negotiate with Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot?”
Macron responded on Wednesday, calling the Polish politician’s comments “baseless and scandalous,” and saying he took “full responsibility for having spoken to the president of Russia, in the name of France, to avoid war and to build a new security architecture for peace in Europe several years ago.”
Donald Tusk, chairman of the Polish opposition party Civic Platform, waded into the spat by assuring his “dear Emmanuel” in a tweet that “no decent Pole supports Madame Le Pen, just like no decent Pole supports [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban or Putin. Poles, in their overwhelming majority are for Europe, Ukraine and freedom, regardless of the rubbish PM Morawiecki says."
France will go to the polls on Sunday for presidential elections. Macron and Le Pen are presently running in a dead heat, with Ifop-Fiducial polling from 4-7 April showing the incumbent in the lead with 26.5 percent to Le Pen’s 24 percent support, and La France Insoumise candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon trailing with 17.5 percent. None of the remaining candidates broke out of single digit support. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent support in Sunday’s vote, a runoff election between the first and second place finishers will be held on 24 April.