Ties between Warsaw and Budapest soured further last month after Polish fugitive lawmaker Marcin Romanowski was granted asylum in Hungary.
Poland has uninvited Hungary’s ambassador to Friday’s inauguration gala of Warsaw’s EU presidency following a diplomatic spat over political asylum, a Polish minister said.
Budapest last month granted political asylum to Poland’s former Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Romanowski, provoking the wrath of Warsaw — which called it a “hostile act”.
Romanowski, a lawmaker with the nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is facing 11 charges by Polish prosecutors for misuse of public funds and a Warsaw court last month issued a European Arrest Warrant against him. Poland last week said it would take Hungary to the European Court of Justice if it does not comply with the warrant.
The incident is the latest blow to the relationship between the two EU members, which was previously strong due to shared views on migration and the bloc but has increasingly soured over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Poland is taking the leadership of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency from Hungary and kicking it off with an event at Warsaw’s Grand Theatre on Friday.
“When we invited guests to our gala almost a month ago, we invited the entire diplomatic corps,” Poland’s Deputy Minister for European Affairs Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said on Friday.
“But after the situation with Minister Romanowski, (Foreign Affairs) Minister (Radosław) Sikorski decided that the Hungarian ambassador is not a welcome guest in the theatre today,” Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said in an interview with Polish public news channel TVP Info.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was also not welcome at the ceremony, said Sobkowiak-Czarnecka.
Since Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his centrist coalition took power in December 2023, ties with Hungary have nosedived.
Warsaw — a staunch ally of Kyiv — has been publicly critical of Budapest for its relationship with Moscow, while Orbán has accused Poland of hypocrisy over its stance on Russia’s war and said that Tusk’s government sees Hungarians as enemies.
Another bone of contention has been Poland’s pro-EU position under Tusk, coming after the PiS’s Euroscepticism, in the face of rising anti-EU rhetoric and threats from Orbán.
During Hungary’s EU presidency, Orbán repeatedly denounced the bloc’s sanctions against Russia and went on a highly criticised visit to Moscow, where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in what he called a “peace mission”. Orbán also came under fire from the European Parliament for meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing shortly after.
Poland’s six-month leadership of the EU Council — its second stint in charge — will focus on boosting security and defence under the slogan “Security, Europe!”, Warsaw has said.
