Richard Czarnecki is a British-born Polish politician who is a member of the European Parliament for the Law and Justice Party (PiS). In the following interview he discusses Poland’s recent announcement that it would not accept its quota of “refugees” as demanded by the European Union.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00 “The Talk of the Day”. And in our studio — Ryszard Czarnecki,

00:04 vice-president of the EU Parliament. Good morning Mr Vice-President.

00:08 Good morning to you, good morning ladies and gentlemen. —“There’s a war being waged against Europe

00:12 and we need to answer with appropriate methods,”

00:16 said Jarosław Kaczyński after Saturday’s terrorist

00:20 attack in London. What methods are appropriate?

00:24 What is Jarosław Kaczyński calling for? —Most of all,

00:28 we cannot encourage immigrants,

00:32 immigrants from outside of Europe, mostly Muslims — let’s call the spade a spade —

00:36 to come here. And all sorts of

00:40 decisions at the EU level

00:44 or on the level of the members of the EU, which are encouraging the arrival, right now,

00:52 of people from outside Europe, automatically

00:56 spin the boom of new phases of immigration. I remember I was

01:04 in Tanzania in a delegation for the EU Parliament

01:08 when Chancellor Merkel very hospitably

01:12 opened the gates of Germany.

01:16 And those scenes on TV were, of course,

01:20 they were something like an… — for the inhabitants

01:24 of Africa — an encouragement: Let’s go to Europe!

01:28 You can’t do that! — You are talking now about political methods, but Jarosław Kaczyński said,

01:32 “…with appropriate political methods, but also different ones,

01:36 if necessary.” Well that corresponds with the words of British PM Theresa May, who

01:40 said that the patience of British people is almost exhausted.

01:44 I’m trying to imagine how such

01:48 a war, with terrorism, waged not only with political methods,

01:53 Might look like; because the main problem isn’t

01:57 the fact if the Islamic State has one town more or less

02:01 in the Middle East, but the problem is what is going on in the streets of European cities.

02:05 Therefore, sacrificing some liberties, a permanent curfew?

02:09 How to win such a war inside the EU?

02:13 Great Britain happens to be a country

02:17 that has at its disposal good special forces, which,

02:21 it has to be said, have stopped a number of terrorist attacks,

02:25 among them also those whose perpetrators could have been

02:29 people called “lone wolves”, who organized the attack by themselves.

02:33 British special forces are rated better than

02:37 the intelligence services in some countries on the continent; however,

02:41 for years Great Britain also accepted, for the sake of peace

02:45 and cohesion, the activities of radical imams on their

02:49 territory, in mosques in British towns.

02:53 And those radical imams were

02:57 cranking up young Muslims

03:01 who — often — were born in the UK and Northern Ireland, and those attackers

03:09 are being recruited precisely from among those people —And suggestions are appearing in other

03:13 EU countries that the radical imams need to be deported.

03:17 Yes, of course, and also we need

03:21 to watch them closely; fortunately this isn’t a Polish problem, because

03:25 Poland was, is, and will be conducting a wise immigration policy,

03:29 following the rule of: “Option ZERO”: Stop, zero

03:33 Islamic immigrants from outside Europe, and Muslim immigrants in general.

03:37 However, other countries, well, brought about the situation

03:42 where those trained

03:46 — in the territory of the Islamic State, in Syria, Iraq

03:50 — young people with French, Belgian, Dutch, British

03:54 German citizenship, are coming back to Europe, and

03:58 a vast majority of the attackers

04:02 who committed those attacks, either in Paris or

04:06 in Brussels or other European agglomerations, all those

04:10 attackers, or at least a large majority of them,

04:14 were trained on the territory of the Islamic State; they went through training,

04:18 then they went back to Europe, and somehow the intelligence services couldn’t

04:22 follow them. Those are very obvious sins of dereliction.

04:26 We, Poland, are learning from other countries’ mistakes;

04:30 we are drawing conclusions from other countries’ mistakes;

04:34 and we certainly won’t open our doors

04:38 to Muslim immigrants at all.

04:42 We can support the refugees there, where they are,

04:46 which also recently was mentioned by former US President

04:50 Barack Obama, disagreeing somewhat with

04:54 his hostess for his visit, Chancellor Merkel. —A very important subject in domestic politics,

04:58 a very important subject in European politics, but moving to

05:02 a higher level, to the UN:

05:06 Poland recently became an non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

05:10 What possibilities does this open up for us?

05:14 How can we really influence what is going on

05:18 globally, thanks to that opportunity? —It’s a great success.

05:23 For comparison, I’m going to — because most media don’t mention it —

05:27 well, six years ago

05:31 our neighbors

05:35 in the new EU, Hungary and Slovenia

05:39 lost a fight for non-permanent membership

05:43 on the UN Security Council. Before that

05:47 the Czech Republic and Slovakia also lost this fight,

05:51 and from the countries in the larger EU

05:55 in the voting, in New York, at the UN forum,

05:59 Italy and Greece failed as well.

06:03 The more we should appreciate Polish success, and also the scale of this success,

06:07 because never before has a country received in a vote

06:11 such a large number of votes.

06:15 190 is a huge number. —So, while being happy for that success,

06:19 I’m trying to translate it into real things, because right now, when

06:23 I read the comments in the papers today, I got the impression that we only did it to put pressure

06:27 on Russia in order to get the wrecked Tupolev back [in which gov’t leaders crashed in Russia].

06:31 Above all, Poland, which is very important, will be

06:35 an ambassador for the countries in our region

06:39 of Eastern Europe, or the New EU, and

06:43 let me remind you that from the New EU

06:47 13 countries entered, among them 11 from our region

06:51 in the last 13 years, but caution, in the situation, where

06:55 in that group of five of the permanent members

06:59 of the UN Security Council, after Brexit

07:04 from the EU members only France will be left, so Poland,

07:08 through those 24 months 2018-2019,

07:12 will also be even more a representative of the EU.

07:16 This also gives us larger possibilities to represent

07:20 the New EU and the entire EU in New York at the UN,

07:24 but also to play some diplomatic-political games

07:28 here, in situ, on the old continent, in Europe.

07:32 However, of course,

07:36 already the fact of our membership caused reactions

07:40 very quickly; Washington as well as Moscow

07:44 turned to Poland for urgent political consultations, probably

07:48 at the level of the assistant ministers of foreign affairs. I’m talking about it because

07:52 this shows that Poland is becoming a player,

07:56 which totally refutes the BS. —That means that the further —

08:00 …the stupid, idiotic propaganda theses of the opposition that Poland

08:04 is isolated, that Poland is meaningless. —But perhaps it means that the further,

08:08 but it’s 190 votes —Perhaps it’s because from far away you see differently than from close up.

08:12 You see differently, because the difference in the way Poland was treated during this vote —

08:16 this success in the UN that you are talking about —

08:20 and how it is painted

08:24 by some of our partners from the EU,

08:28 Well, is very big. —Well, in Europe there is

08:32 a certain war, not only the real war with Islam,

08:36 but also within Europe a war between the leftist, liberal circles,

08:40 with the conservative, traditional circles,

08:44 which defend certain values, and of course

08:48 within that war the target is

08:52 also sometimes Poland, which is ruled by

08:56 a party that respects traditional values: Christian

09:00 and patriotic. But the fact that the vice-president of

09:04 the European Commission, Mr Timmermans was for years an activist

09:09 of the Dutch Left, of the Labour Party, is often somehow

09:13 forgotten by commentators, and it’s worth reminding people of.

09:17 Are we going to have a new Prime Minister? Mateusz Morawiecki is supposed to replace Beata Szydło,

09:21 So Rzeczpospolita [a newspaper] speculates. And Beata Szydło

09:25 will supposedly become the president of the Parliament, replacing Marek Kuchciński.

09:29 I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t think that

09:33 these types of changes

09:37 were being discussed right now by the leadership of PiS [Law and Justice party].

09:41 But the propositions that the Polish people will hear

09:45 during the party congress in July — must be already be

09:49 under discussion. Do you know anything about that?

09:53 We want to present a proposal for Poland and for the Polish people,

09:57 not for the political class, because

10:01 in reality our

10:05 “examiners” are Polish taxpayers, Polish voters,

10:09 and independent of the fact that the opposition,

10:13 also unfortunately — and I’m saying it as the vice-president of the EU Parliament —

10:17 …so the opposition in the West in the EU

10:21 also paints our homeland

10:25 in very dark colors, and often in

10:29 an unjust, unfair and false manner.

10:33 We — are going forward without paying attention to it, and we will try to represent

10:37 very specific propositions, which like those

10:41 made up until now, during the eighteen months of our government,

10:45 for a Kowalski and a Nowak [typical Polish names],

10:49 their families will live better and Poland will be stronger on the international stage,

10:53 which has been proven by the vote in the UN. —Since you underline

10:57 the word “taxpayer” so much, I’m guessing that those who

11:01 speculate that perhaps the economic subjects

11:06 we’ll be hearing during that congress and new propositions will surface are right.

11:10 It’s a part of the life of Polish people, you might say… —Ryszard Czarnecki, vice-president of the

11:14 EU Parliament, was the guest of Signs of the Day on Channel One on the radio.

11:18 Thank you very much. —Thank you, and have a good day.