Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s Prague speech shows similarities with Ordo Iuris report, prompting Sikorski to call the group a fundamentalist sect.
Nawrocki’s Lecture in Prague
In Saturday’s article, the Goniec portal described similarities between Karol Nawrocki’s speech at Charles University in Prague and theses presented by the right-wing think tank Ordo Iuris in its report “The Great Reset: Restoring the Sovereignty of Member States in the European Union”. The president spoke at the Prague university on November 24.
In his lecture, Nawrocki presented his vision of the European Union, calling for rejecting the trend of EU centralization which, he stated, would weaken member states except for the two largest.
Similarities
As described by Goniec, some sentences in Nawrocki’s lecture are very similar to the text of Ordo Iuris. The portal provided examples, including Nawrocki’s statement that “There is no European demos; its existence cannot be decreed” which mirrors Ordo Iuris’s text: “There is no European demos. A political community cannot be created without a nation.”
The president also stated that “The European Commission and its subordinate institutions do not have a real democratic mandate,” similar to Ordo Iuris’s text: “The European Commission does not have democratic legitimacy.” Wojciech Przybylski from Res Publica Nova was the first to point out these similarities.
Chancellery: The President is the Author of the Lecture
In response to questions from the portal, the Presidential Chancellery confirmed that Nawrocki is the author of the speech given in Prague. The portal’s findings were commented on by Radosław Sikorski.
“The fundamentalist sect Ordo Iuris is trying to take us back to the 19th century in social policy and also in foreign policy. Thank you, I’ve seen this movie, it is ominous for us” – wrote the deputy prime minister and head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hungarian Partners of Ordo Iuris
The Ordo Iuris report was prepared together with the Hungarian think tank and private university Mathias Corvinus Collegium. According to Goniec, MCC received enormous financial resources from the state in 2020, including 10% shares in companies MOL and Gedeon Richter, as well as money and real estate worth over a billion dollars.
Controversies
On the organization’s website, Ordo Iuris describes itself as an “independent, legal think tank” that “fights for respect for fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution – the right to life, the identity of marriage and family, freedom of conscience.”
The activities of OI have long been controversial due to its ultra-conservative character. The organization, among others, spoke out against the ratification by Poland of the so-called anti-violence convention. Lawyers from Ordo Iuris also represented anti-abortion activists in court who place drastic materials in public spaces.
