Jakub Majmurek: Why are you moving for the European Parliament?
Maciej Necessary: due to the fact that I am convinced that it is up to the European Parliament to see how we live in Poland. It is simply a question of, for example, the energy transformation: how much average people will pay for it, and how much large business. It is in the interests of Poland that Europe is politically and economically strong, capable of providing an alternate for both China and India and for the United States. A planet where Europe means more will just be better. All these things can't be dealt with at national level.
I besides feel that so far we have not been ambitious about representing Poland in Europe. Either we agreed to everything as it goes, or – and this option seems to dominate again – we assumed the necessity to block and halt Europe. Instead, I would like us to actively co-create Europe.
But isn't that unfair to the voters who gave you a four-year mandate in the Sejm? The voters together have been very consciously voting tactically for your candidates. Meanwhile, you're most likely giving distant your ticket in the Sejm, and you're being replaced by a fresh Left candidate.
Yes, Natalia Nowak-Trojnar. And I can say this will be a reinforcement for the Coalition Left Club. From the point of view of organization voters It is besides crucial that the democratic, socialist position of the Polish left be represented in the Euro-Parliament.
Don't you have people who aren't sitting in the Seym who can take up this task?
That's not how it works. The logic of these choices is that you gotta bet on already known faces. Especially since the run will be short, 3rd in a row and will be moderately interesting to voters.
Isn't that a confession that you have a very short bench?
On the contrary. We have, for example, Dorothy Kolarska, who is simply a large candidate from the second place in Krakow. If I were to point out individual who is more competent and has more cognition of the European Union than I am, that would be her. Unfortunately, our coalitions would not accept specified a candidacy from the first place – due to the fact that you request a name to draw the list already known. So if the organization together is to have representation in the EP, and this is crucial to us, then we had to set up individual known from the Sejm.
What about your work on the visa investigation committee?
The chair of this committee besides goes to the EP and will end its work. Good, 'cause there's no point dragging things around, we're already working on the final report. I think I did my occupation there.
What do you want to do in the European Parliament?
What I did in the Polish Parliament: energy, global affairs, social cohesion and labour rights. But I will effort to get to the Energy and abroad Affairs Committee first.
Will you join the European Socialist organization club?
I don't think so.
Where are you going to sit, then, due to the fact that you said before you wouldn't enter the Left/Nordic Greens (GUE/NGL) faction?
I would very much like to sit in 1 faction with friends from the NGL, due to the fact that the green Nordic left is the closest possible to us. On the 1 hand, it is focused on moving distant from the neoliberal way of reasoning about the Union, on its reforms in a more egalitarian direction, on the other, an knowing threat from Russia.
However, there is no shortage of concrete parties in the GUE today, most frequently with very unreasonable views on geopolitical issues. With these forces on board, the presence in this faction would be unacceptable from the point of view of Polish security.
However, there is simply a chance that the left side of the Europarliament will be redecorated after the election. In fresh years, since the launch of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we have become active in building an alliance network among the socialist, democratic left from our part of Europe. And in the next word of the Europarliament we would like to proceed this Central European-Nordic partnership.
What will the new, tiny green-left faction have in the Europarliament? Is she going to influence anything?
We as a organization Together specialise in exerting influence from number positions and in the Euro-Parliament we will proceed this path.
Why don't you like PES as a affiliation?
We have always been critical of the model of European integration supported by the PES, which is based on the primacy of competition and budgetary discipline. This approach, of course, is changing in the PES and the full Union, the war and the pandemic have forced Europe to revalue many, previously seemingly inviolable, dogmas.
However, I believe that the most effective we can build a fresh European order, putting force on social democracy on the left, so that it does not return to the old tracks. If something interesting about politics is achieved in any European countries, then where force comes on social democrats by parties to the left of them.
What kind of people are they?
Like Spain and Portugal.
Spain with a evidence number of young people in the Union, who neither work nor proceed their education, cannot be considered a large success?
A decade ago, Spain experienced a very deep crisis, linked not only to the situation of young people on the labour marketplace but besides to the housing market. It triggered a strong, extremist left-wing reaction, at 1 point it seemed that Podemos would take power. This did not happen, and ultimately, from this crisis, it allowed a left-wing social democratic compromise to emerge. Spain truly has a very ambitious social policy today, that is simply a direction worth following.
You said you wanted to address climate issues in the EP. In this campaign, we discuss the Green Order. What does the essential MP think of him – Green Deal: yes or no?
Yeah, but. Which, as investigation shows, is the attitude of most Poles who answer: we want a better future for our children and green transformation, but not such. And that is simply a much smarter answer than the majority of the Polish political scene, which wants to throw the Green Deal in the basket.
So what should be the green transformation?
Its costs must first of all be charged not to average people, but to the large business and capital that earned the most from destroying the planet. So I answer to the question about the Green Deal: "Redistribution, fool!" And it is the European Union that has better tools than national states to launch it.
Secondly, green transformation should be little based on restrictions and bans and more on investment. I would like Europe to invest more in renewable energy sources, in atomic energy, in high-speed railways. Let us see how many high-speed railways are being built present in China and how many in the Union. Europe is losing due to the fact that the rail marketplace is not sufficiently integrated, the European railway has inactive not entered the Schengen area. Meanwhile, the norm should be that we get on the train in the evening in Katowice and wake up in the morning in Barcelona.
All these investments could become the driving wheel of the European economy.
And these investments would fund a European taxation on large fortunes?
From large fortunes, capital transactions, there would be a digital taxation and a fight against taxation havens. This is the program of the full left, not only Together, even the mainstream European left is present where 20 years ago there was the alterglobalist movement I belonged to.
Let's take the air traffic. We have very wealthy people traveling around the planet in private aircraft, which emits quite a few carbon dioxide. They request to be taxed so that specified a form of travel does not pay off alternatively of even multimillionaires, alternatively than charging the costs of people who fly all inclusive in Egypt erstwhile a year. If the last ones should pay any green tax, that's minimum.
So, the government has done the right thing to postpone the ban on the registration of fresh combustion cars, alternatively of putting it in support of electricians?
In general, I have doubts as to how much we are able to mass, safely and sustainably, electrify individual car transport. There are many bottlenecks, specified as the availability of uncommon metals essential for batteries. So I would focus on investing in collective transport, reasoning hybrids, in the future hydrogen.
It is crucial to show maximum pragmatism. due to the fact that we're not going to do a green transformation if it creates mass social resistance.
Would you vote in favour of the warming directive?
I would like it to take the form that I can vote for it. due to the fact that building warming serves everyone. But if the Union had not allocated adequate resources to Poland – and we have quite a few unwarmed buildings against the background of Europe – then I would not regulation out a vote against. I surely would not agree that poorer Poles should stay with the cost of warming their homes, which they will not gotta cover.
But I am not going to the EP to express my opposition, but to presume that there is simply a space for real politics between agreeing to everything and a meaningless "no" vote. This has worked in the past, even with the methane directive. It could bring an uncontrolled fall of Polish mining. However, we have made negotiations, which are already late, which have changed the parameters of this directive, so that we can implement the plan of gradual departure from coal.
Unfortunately, the approach of Polish politicians in Europe to specified negotiations is frequently so defensive that in fact parties could put forward Czesław Michniewicz in the election. Meanwhile, we can truly co-create EU policies.
However, I will go back to the question of whether it would not be more effective to do so within the framework of a large coalition dominant in the PES Euro-Parliament than in a tiny left-wing faction?
Experience from the Polish parliament taught us that while maintaining independence, there is much to be done. For example, we most likely managed to cut the debt zero percent.
If the government actually pulls out of the project, it's mostly due to a small enthusiastic polling.
Why are polls so different? due to the fact that for respective years we have been saying consistently that lending subsidies, the welfare state for banks and developers, will not solve the housing problem in Poland. We could proceed this message after the elections, thanks to the independency it gave us to stay outside the government. This made zero percent credit politically impossible.
The second point returning to the run is the revision of the European treaties. How do you look at the proposals for amendments adopted by the European Parliament last year?
I am in favour of ending the rule of unanimity, the right of veto in the European Council, but at the same time I think that we should agree on ways of voting, which will not like large countries, so that Germany and France cannot vote together.
The proposals adopted last year make this possible?
In my opinion, they do not sufficiently defend us from German-French hegemony.
So how can we be protected?
The number of people represented by the countries afraid may be increased, essential to win the vote. Or to introduce a progressive strategy of population counting – so that the population advantage of the largest countries weighs little than would consequence from numbers. So that the top besides gotta truly build broad European alliances for their proposals.
The package adopted by the EP assumes the transfer of further competences to the Union previously with national countries, specified as the environment or education. Is that a good direction?
The environment recognises national borders on average, so European policy should be deeper integrated. We on the left are in general in favour of deeper integration. We support the increased competence of the EU budget. That'll give us more, not less.
The right says it will take our sovereignty.
What is sovereignty? I'd say the ability to co-shape the planet in your own interests. As a country incapable to respond to the challenges of climate change or the dominance of large technology companies alone, we will not be sovereign.
However, there is simply a problem of democratic deficits within the EU.
He is real, and we propose strengthening the competences of the European Parliament, which has direct democratic legitimacy. We want Parliament to have a legislative initiative so that it can call off the European Commissioner with policies not supported by Parliament.
This is simply a step towards the federalization of Europe.
The Left supports the federalisation of Europe. The strong rooting of Poland in the core of European states is what best guarantees our safety in the long term. I have no feeling, as a Polish patriot, that Poland should lose nevertheless much on this.
However, Poland inactive has different interests on many issues than France, Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, as a consequence of the different structure and level of improvement of our economy. And the Danish or Dutch do not necessarily request Poland to make the most future sectors of its economy.
Of course there are conflicts of interest in Europe. But Poland will gain better self-protection tools in a more integrated Europe than it does in a Europe that is confined to the common market. Deeper integration is besides of social importance to us, so we are talking, for example, about a European minimum wage.
Are Polish employers inactive incapable to pay it at German level?
Only, alternatively of German employers, should Polish business start worrying about Romanian and Bulgarian? How he competes with him through very low wages, what will the European minimum wage defend Polish entrepreneurs from? We are truly no longer an unaffluent country on the acquis, and in 20 years in the Union we have come a long way.
The Polish debate on the Union shifted in these elections to more Eurosceptic positions than 10 or even 5 years ago. You are any of the last Mohicans of Euroenthusiasm. Isn't it a small bit that the train has left and the left is where the Schuman Parade is?
I never truly stood where Schuman's parade was. I even erstwhile organised a counter-demonstration against it in relation to TTIP, a free trade agreement between the EU and the States.
It is not our train that left, it is something absurd that is happening in Polish politics. The PiS was pushed into the Confederate's corner, and the PiS Platform. I do not feel that Polish society is as Eurosceptic as it would have been from this campaign. It is truly curiosistic that erstwhile Poland is in danger from the east, almost everyone abruptly became more or little Eurosceptic. That is why the sensible pro-European voice of the left is so much needed.
Only a voter who fears the PiS and polexit can consider it best to vote for the strongest able to block this party, or KO.
In the European elections, there is no hazard that the PiS will take over. You don't gotta vote for little evil. The problem is that the more hysterical Donald Tusk attacks the PiS, showing spots with skulls, the more he moves to writing positions.
With respect to Green Deal, Tusk speaks an increasingly Eurosceptic voice. Let us take the protection of human rights at the border: how is Tusk different from the Law and Justice Office today? Or about the migration pact?
Would you support the migration pact as a Euro MP?
In my opinion, he besides poorly protects exile rights. But any country could mention to selected elements of the pact. And only 2 countries rejected it in its entirety: Poland and Hungary. We are a border country of the Union, we know that in the future we may request European solidarity on migration and at the same time we reject it as the only 1 with Orbán.
Your communicative about Europe isn't separated from the main emotion, security?
For now, both parties are accusing themselves of being a Russian agent. This is ridiculous. After all, we know that Russia wants to boost polarisation in European democracies. A part of our safety is whether we will have a functional political scene, where opponents are treated as individual to be persuaded alternatively than an enemy to be excluded from average participation in a democratic game.
Didn't the Law and Justice show what he did between 2015 and 2023 that he was not a organization that could be treated as a average component of democratic governance?
You build democracies after you leave the civilian War, and we're not expected to deal with the fact that for 8 years we had a bunch of power? Really, let's keep any proportions here. Where they broke the law, of course, it should be settled. But the state must return to average functioning.
Meanwhile, the government, which keeps talking about accounting for the Law and Justice, is not peculiarly busy in the remaining fields. We keep proceeding that there's no money for improvement projects or that if they are, 25 years from now. That's not a good forecast for the future.
Returning to security: are we getting NATO present or do we request deeper integration and a more active Union policy here?
Today, NATO does us a beautiful good job, but we don't know what next day will be like. Even if Trump does not win, it is clear that the geopolitical interest of the American elite moves towards the Pacific. So further integration of Europe, investment in European defence industries is simply a sensible decision at the moment.
Will you support Ukraine's accession to the EU in the EP?
Of course, Ukraine should become a full member.
This may mean problems for Polish farmers.
Today we have a affirmative trade balance in exchange with Ukraine. I do not deny that Ukraine's accession brings a number of challenges for Poland to be prepared for, but it would be blind not to see the opportunities it creates for us. This is simply a large marketplace and a chance for our exports.
How should the Union respond to the American force to loosen economical ties with China?
The age of naive belief that we have 1 global marketplace and so there is no concern that most of our processors or active substances in drugs come from China, due to the fact that they will always arrive on time, at most with a fewer days delay, ended with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
We should not be dependent on an authoritarian state. All that is needed for us to function should be produced on the ground, in Europe or in countries that are unchangeable with us, with a close political model. alternatively of off-shoring, we should be betting on friendly-shoring.
The reactions of the Global South to the war in Ukraine do not show that the West is not doing well in the communicative war with Russia?
If we want to be credible to the world, we must apply uniform standards in terms of global law and human rights. Which means that sanctions on the current Israeli government should be obvious. due to the fact that what are the inhabitants of the global South to think, seeing how disproportionate the Western consequence to what is happening in Gaza and Ukraine? Seeing Israel conduct cultural cleansing, utilizing hunger as a weapon, illegally building settlements in Palestinian lands, and the West is virtually unresponsive?
Will you deal with Palestine in the European Parliament?
Yes, as in Polish.
In what direction would you like to push European policy in this area?
One who will force Israel to abide by global law. due to the fact that if the European Union had behaved more decisively here, possibly we would have avoided the current tragedy, a situation where there is simply a serious hazard that we are dealing with genocide. But how did Europe respond to Israel’s years of breaking law? It introduced a regulation that products from illegal settlements are to be specifically marked. It's truly not enough.
But is it not a paradox that the global Criminal Court is pursuing Netanjah alternatively than Assad?
But I'm all for Assad too!
Only at the same time does Europe have no thought how to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine in a way acceptable to both parties.
There was an thought of a two-state solution that was blocked by Israel.
Hamas has played a crucial function in this.
The only force that sought this solution was the Palestinian authorities of Fatahu. However, they did not have a partner on the Israeli side. By doing so, Fatah completely lost his legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinian society. Hamas, in turn, is simply a terrorist organization and after October 7, there is no uncertainty that they are no partner for the conversation. I stress this in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in which I participate, most likely taking the comfort of demonstrating to any of their participants. However, Poland's left can separate between fighters and bandits.
You admit that Israel does not have a partner to talk to. So what's he expected to do?
He had it for years, he just didn't want to truly communicate with it. Legally, Israel is liable for the Palestinian territories it occupies. Before the tragedy in Gaza, I had advanced hopes for a human rights mention position. Looking at Israelis and Palestinians as 1 community that deserves equal rights. Which can be arranged either on the basis of democracy or apartheid – what is the situation in Israel present according to specified organizations as Amnesty International. I believed that the Palestinian rights movement could force change in a democratic direction. Now we're in a totally different situation. And now the most crucial thing is to halt the tragedy in Gaza.
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Maciej essential –
