PM Tusk defends Orban amid EU crisis talks

PM Donald Tusk speaking on January 18. PAP

Poland has asked for the voices of countries outside the eurozone but within the EU to be heard at the talks.

Tighter fiscal union is a controversial subject and part of a wider discussion within the EU as to how to save the euro in the short-term and keep the union together in the longer-term.

It would reduce sovereign governments' options in areas such as tax policy and could raise prospects of a 'two-tier' Europe, with peripheral countries potentially losing political influence.

At least these are two of the fears raised from Lisbon, through Athens, to Warsaw and Budapest.

Warsaw wants any agreement reached to go before all member states’ parliaments.

Tusk also said the political reactions to recent events in Hungary were “exaggerated” and that he would seek to help his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban at the European summit.

Orban is at the European Parliament today and his recent change in constitution is likely to be fiercely attacked by many of the MEPs mainly from the left of the chamber.

Tusk said that Hungary had “a European level standard of democracy.”

It is not hard to see why opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski would – as he did today – support Hungary’s beleaguered PM, but Tusk’s support is harder to explain.

It may be related to Poland’s attempts to have its voice heard at the upcoming talks on how – or if – to coordinate the EU’s fiscal systems.

Tusk may be flirting with euroscepticism, an easy populist stance to take before any potentially damaging changes become institutionalised within the EU.(jh)