If Poland's newly
elected leader continues to oppose gay rights and seeks
to introduce the death penalty, the country stands to lose
its European Union voting rights, an E.U. commission
warned on Monday, a day after the staunchly antigay
mayor of Warsaw was elected president with about 55% of
the vote.
In a shot across
the bow of archconservative Lech Kaczynski, the
commission declared that all member states must abide by
E.U. rules, which protect minorities and block the
death penalty, The [London] Guardian
newspaper reported. Failure to comply could trigger a
special process under the Treaty of Nice, which
deprives errant member states of their voting rights
in ministerial meetings. "We are going to follow the
situation very attentively," the principal commission
spokesman, Jonathan Todd, told the paper.
The commission
intervened after Kaczynski, the Law and Justice party
candidate, was confirmed as the winner of Sunday's second
round in the Polish presidential election. The
election cleared the way for a strengthened Law and
Justice party, headed by the new president's identical
twin brother, Jaroslaw, to launch formal coalition talks
with the Civic Platform party. The two parties won a
conservative majority in parliamentary elections on
September 25.
European
diplomats will be watching the negotiations carefully after
the election of the new president, who made his name
as mayor of Warsaw. A strongly conservative Catholic,
he refused to allow gay pride marches and supports the
death penalty. Friso Roscam Abbing, the European
commission's justice spokesman, warned the new president
that he must abide by Article 6 of the Treaty of Nice,
which says that all member states must protect
minority rights and not impose the death penalty. A
failure to comply could trigger Article 7, which allows the
E.U. to deprive a member state of voting rights
because the member state is considered in "serious
breach" of its obligations on human rights.
