Breitbart: Legislation designed to give Poland’s newly-elected conservative government control of state media outlets and the sole power to appoint executives to senior broadcasting positions has been slammed by European Commissioner Günther Oettinger.
Mr Oettinger has accused Poland, the European Union’s (EU) sixth-largest member state, of infringing “common European values” and threatened the country with immediate sanctions coupled with legal action.
The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, has already signed the bill into law. Now the move could start a series of steps that, if the law remains in place, could eventually see Warsaw stripped of voting rights at the European Council, the organisation that groups the leaders of all 28 EU nations.
In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday, the commissioner for the digital economy and society said: “Many reasons exist for us to activate the ‘Rule of Law mechanism’ and for us to place Warsaw under monitoring.”
“A director (of public radio or television) cannot be dismissed without cause. It would be arbitrary.”
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has threatened to implement the rule of law procedure, in place since 2014 to protect against “systemic dangers to the rule of law,” the paper reported.
The measure is the latest in a raft of measures introduced by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, which won a general election in October.
The media bill, which was submitted to the conservative-dominated parliament on December 30, 2015 was easily approved by 232 lawmakers, with 152 voting against and 34 MPs abstaining.
