Personal tools
Skip to content. Skip to navigation

EUbusiness.com - business, legal and economic news and information from the European Union

Sections
You are here: Home Live news Poland's new government will adopt EU rights charter: official
Document Actions

Poland's new government will adopt EU rights charter: official

22 October 2007, 10:27 CET

(WARSAW) - Poland's incoming pro-business government will adopt the EU charter of fundamental rights, which Warsaw's ousted conservatives bitterly opposed during reform treaty talks, a top party official said Sunday.

"It will be a modernising government, and very actively involved in the EU. So it will change Poland's stance on the treaty and thus will adhere to the charter of fundamental rights," Jacek Saryusz-Wolski told AFP.

Saryusz-Wolski spoke after exit polls showed that his Civic Platform (PO) party had trounced the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) movement of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski.

Saryusz-Wolski is president of the European Parliament's foreign policy committee and PO's main spokesman on EU issues.

At an EU summit in Lisbon last Thursday and Friday, the Polish delegation led by Lech Kaczynski had stood firm on Warsaw's opposition to the European charter of fundamental rights.

Kaczynski had argued that deeply Catholic "Poland's point of view culturally is different from the majority of other European countries," notably in its stance on gay rights.

Warsaw's conservatives had nonetheless said they would adopt part of the charter related to workers' rights, in a nod to the role played by the Polish Solidarity trade union in bringing down communism in the 1980s.

PO's adoption of the full charter will leave Britain as the only member of the 27-nation EU to have opted out of the charter.

Text and Picture Copyright 2007 AFP. All other Copyright 2007 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.




Subscribers
EUbusiness Week 422
Euro-MPs back Blue Card scheme
NEWSLETTER SIGNUP
Week Ahead
CAP reform Health Check
WEEK AHEAD SIGNUP
Premium Partner
Credit Crunch and Late Payments - Intrum Justitia
PARTNER SIGNUP
* SUBSCRIPTIONS *
Cache EUB's Breaking News Portlet as HTML Cache EUB's Upcoming Events Portlet as HTML