EU summit: Polish opposition critical, gov’t praises deal

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło has said she is satisfied with a deal hammered out at a Brussels summit on Friday that renegotiates the UK's membership of the EU. “We have an agreement that is satisfactory for Poland, and that is satisfactory for the EU,” she said.

But Grzegorz Schetyna, head of Poland’s opposition Civic Platform (PO) party, told public broadcaster Polish Radio on Monday: “This is no success. It’s a failure.”

He added: “If this is an enormous British success, it was at the expense of Poles living in Britain and those who will go and legally work there and [at the expense of] benefits for their children.”

Under a deal hammered out at the Brussels summit, London will be able to scale back benefits paid to children not resident in Britain.

Part of the deal would see Britain cutting such “exported” child benefits to match the level of social welfare payouts in a EU worker's home country. Benefits in Poland are significantly lower than in the UK.

Following the Brussels meeting of EU leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin could follow in London's footsteps and reduce benefits for children from other EU countries.

Warsaw had pressed for cuts in benefits to be kept as low as possible.

During summit negotiations, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymański said that reaching a compromise was important in order to stop the hundreds of thousands of Polish workers in Britain “losing their rights” if the UK were to decide to leave the EU. (pk/rg)

Source: Polish Radio