Poland Summons Hungary’s Envoy in Escalating Asylum-Case Dispute
(Bloomberg) -- Poland summoned Hungary’s ambassador to Warsaw after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government granted asylum to a fugitive Polish opposition lawmaker.
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The dispute marks a sharp deterioration in already strained relations between once close European Union allies. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who ousted the nationalist government in Polish elections last year, has become one of the fiercest critics of Orban’s increasingly autocratic rule and pro-Russian rhetoric.
Tensions flared after Hungary on Thursday confirmed that it had granted political asylum to former Polish deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, who is wanted on fraud charges. Romanowski, who had gone into hiding after claiming that the case against him was politically motivated, had served under the previous Law & Justice-led cabinet, one of the few to have maintained close ties with Orban. He’s denied wrongdoing.
On Friday, Poland summoned the Hungarian ambassador in protest and recalled its own envoy to Budapest for consultations. The measure is a step toward “lowering the level of diplomatic relations between the two countries,” Foreign ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski said.
Hungary’s decision to grant the asylum request wasn’t political, Orban told reporters after an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, saying he was “not a part of the legal procedure.” At the same time, he pointed to strained bilateral ties and singled out recent rule-of-law criticism from Polish Justice Minister Adam Bodnar as a “brutal attack” against Hungary.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski slammed Hungary’s asylum decision as “a hostile act” against a country that’s seeking to bring to justice former officials wanted for corruption or fraud.
The former head of the state strategic reserve agency, Michal Kuczmierowski, was arrested in the UK in September and is awaiting extradition to Poland. In May, Polish Judge Tomasz Szmydt fled the country and on Monday asked for political asylum from Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
“I didn’t expect that the corrupt officials running away from justice will have a choice between Lukashenko and Orban,” Tusk said at a press conference at the EU summit he attended alongside Orban. “Nobody has any doubts that those who stole, were corrupt are looking for shelter under the wings of politicians who are very much like them.”
Bodnar, his justice minister, said on Friday that it would be difficult to return Romanowski to Poland without cooperation from Hungary.
It’s not the first instance that Hungary is sheltering persons under investigation by Polish authorities. Daniel Obajtek, the former chief executive officer of state-owned refiner Orlen, stayed in Budapest earlier this year until he became a European parliament lawmaker, giving him immunity from potential prosecution.
On Thursday, Polish prosecutors requested that the immunity of three Law & Justice lawmakers, including Obajtek, be lifted in order to press charges.
In 2018, Hungary had also granted political asylum to Nikola Gruevski, the former prime minister of North Macedonia. At the time, Gruevski had escaped to Budapest to avert starting a jail term back home for abuse of power.
(Recasts with fresh developments.)
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