POLAND’S new right-wing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki sacked his defence and foreign ministers in a major cabinet reshuffle today, as he seeks to mend strained ties with the country’s EU partners.

The prime minister is due to fly to Brussels for talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker later today focused on the EU’s unprecedented disciplinary procedure against Warsaw over its controversial judicial reforms, which Brussels says threaten the rule of law.

Ahead of his departure, it was announced that defence minister Antoni Macierewicz and foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski lost their jobs along with environment minister Jan Szyszko, among others, at an official ceremony held at the presidential palace in Warsaw.

Interior minister Mariusz Blaszczak took over the defence portfolio, while Jacek Czaputowicz, a deputy foreign minister with centrist views, will serve as foreign minister.

“We don’t want to be a dogmatic, doctrinaire or extremist government; we want to be a government that draws together the economy and society, as well as the European and global dimensions with the local level,” Morawiecki, who himself took office just last month, said as he greeted his new cabinet.

Warsaw-based political analyst Eryk Mystewicz described the reshuffle as “a new opening with the EU that gives a strong signal to Europe.”

“Morawiecki, Czaputowicz are not people who can be accused of wanting a Polexit.” Mystewicz said, adding that Czaputowicz as foreign minister “is a man from the centre who can give a new impetus to relations between Warsaw and Brussels.”

In a major escalation against one of the bloc’s biggest states, Brussels last month triggered article seven of the EU treaty over what it sees as “systemic threats” to the independence of the Polish judiciary from the nation’s right-wing government.

Never before used against an EU member state, the proceedings can eventually lead to the “nuclear option” of the suspension of a country’s voting rights within the bloc.

The European Union gave Warsaw three months to remedy the situation, saying it could withdraw the measures if it did.

But just hours after the EU announcement, a defiant Polish president went ahead and signed the reforms into law and accused the bloc of “lying” about them.

Poland insists the reforms are aimed at banishing the last vestiges of communism from its justice system.

‘Basic consensus’

In excerpts of an interview aired today on German public television, Juncker said he does not want to threaten Warsaw with cutting financial aid in the dispute about the rule of law and also its refusal to accept refugees under an EU quota system.

“I am not in the mood… to make wild threats. I would like that we talk to each other in a reasonable way… I am not in a belligerent mood, I want us to move together with the Poles towards a basic consensus,” Juncker said.

The rule of law row underlines growing east-west tensions within the European Union, with former Soviet bloc states like Poland and Hungary refusing to toe the Brussels line on several thorny issues, including judicial and media independence as well as immigration.

Warsaw-based political scientist Stanislaw Mocek told AFP that the new cabinet was “aimed at improving the tarnished image of Poland abroad, especially in its relations with the EU.”

He also said that the deep reshuffle made it appear that Morawiecki, a member of the ruling PiS party, “had more freedom” in decision-making than his predecessor Beata Szydlo, who was regarded as working on the orders of the party’s powerful leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, widely seen as Poland’s ultimate powerbroker.

The other cabinet changes include Henryk Kowalczyk, who will be in charge of the environment ministry, as Poland risks heavy fines under an EU injunction ordering it to stop logging in the Bialowieza Forest, one of Europe’s last primeval woodlands.

The ministers of health and digitisation have also been sacked. – AFP, January 9, 2018.