Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoed a controversial media law on Monday, December 27, suspected by critics of being a tool in the hands of the right-wing populist government to silence the independent news channel TVN24, controlled by the American Discovery.
"I refuse to sign the amendment on radio and television and send it back to Parliament for further consideration. This means that I am vetoing it," Andrzej Duda said on Monday in a television ad, which followed de strong American and European criticism.
The text, adopted by the Polish parliament on December 17 and wanted by the populist PiS (Law and Justice) party in power, was intended to prevent companies that do not belong to the European Economic Area (EEA, which includes the 27 states of the 'EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) to hold majority stake in Polish media companies. This was to force the American group Discovery to sell its stake in TVN, one of the largest private television networks in Poland. TVN24 is his 24-hour news channel, considered critical of the ruling conservatives.
The government for its part affirmed that the law should protect the Polish media landscape against potentially hostile actors, such as Russia. Andrzej Duda said he remained true to this principle, but the law should not undermine existing investments or go against international agreements. “The people I spoke to are concerned about this situation. They have different arguments. They spoke of peace and quiet… We don't need a new conflict, a new problem. We have already a lot of problems, "said the president.
The Polish president has the backing of the ruling PiS party, but has had some differences with its leaders in the past.
In 2017, he stirred up a storm by vetoing two judicial reforms that he said gave too much power to the Attorney General, who is also the Minister of Justice.
"Positive signal"
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan welcomed the move during an appeal with his Polish counterpart Pawel Soloch and Jakub Kumoch, advisor to the Polish president.
He expressed the "satisfaction" of President Joe Biden after this veto, seen as "a positive signal just before Poland takes over the presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on January 1 ", according to a statement from the White House.
The American charge d'affaires in Warsaw, Bix Aliu, had previously asked the Polish president to block the law on the media, stressing that Washington was "extremely disappointed" by the adoption of this text.
A spokesperson for the European Commission underlined that this law presented "serious risks for the freedom and pluralism of the media in Poland".
TVN welcomed the announcement, welcoming the Polish president's choice of "good relations with the United States".
Thousands of people demonstrated on December 19 outside the Presidency in Warsaw and elsewhere in the country, waving EU flags and chanting "Free Media!"
and "We want a veto!".
Former Polish Prime Minister and former European Council President Donald Tusk, who heads the opposition Civic Platform party, said President Duda's decision showed that "pushing makes sense".
Arm wrestling
The PiS already controls public television TVP, which has become a major asset of the populist government, and most of the regional press.
Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders hailed "good news for press freedom, which is in dire straits in Poland." Since PiS came to power in 2015, Poland has fallen by 46 places in the RSF press freedom ranking, at 64.
Poland and the EU have also been engaged in a standoff for several years over the judicial reforms launched by the PiS since 2015. Brussels last week launched an infringement procedure against Warsaw following judgments by the Polish constitutional court challenging the primacy of European law and the authority of the Court of Justice of the EU.
With AFP
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