Poland accuses Germany of wanting to build a ‘IV Reich’

The deputy prime minister of the Polish nationalist government, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accused Germany of wanting to transform the European Union (EU) into a federalist “Fourth Reich”, in an interview published on Friday.

There are countries that “are not enthusiastic about the prospect of building a German Fourth Reich on the basis of the EU,” also the president of the Law and Justice party (PiS) told the far-right Polish daily GPC.

For Kaczynski, the term of the German IV Reich “has nothing negative, it does not refer to the Third Reich (the Nazi regime, ndlr), but to the Holy Roman Empire of Germany.”

During the recent visit of the new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to Poland, his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, put on the table the concept of a “Europe of sovereign nations” that his government defends.

Kaczynski also attacked the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), which he considers a “basic instrument” to impose federalist ideas.

“If we Poles agreed to that kind of modern submission, they would humiliate us in many ways,” he added.

Influenced by the power of PiS, the Polish Constitutional Court in June challenged the authority of the CJEU, and in October it called into question the primacy of European law over Polish law. (I)