Linas Jegelevičius
Two neighbours, Lithuania and Poland, have been through thick throughout history. Following war in Ukraine, both countries have turned up as the staunchest supporters of the country – unequivocally. An unexpected throwback to booming relations came in the beginning of May during Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s visit to Vilnius.
Having met Lithuania’s leaders, before leaving the Lithuanian capital, he bestowed Polish state awards – badges of honour for services to the Polish diaspora – to Waldemar Tomaszewski and Stanislaw Pieszko, two controversial Lithuanian politicians of Polish descent.
“Indeed, it leaves a woeful impression. Undoubtedly,
relations between Poland and Lithuania have been excellent and this is like a fly in the ointment,”
Mindaugas Skritulskas, a Conservative Lithuanian MP, told BNN.
Tomaszewski, the leader of the Polish ethnicity-based party, the Electoral Action of Poles (LLRA) in Lithuania – Christian Families Alliance, previously hit out at the ban on Russian channels in Lithuania and argued that it was necessary to seek contact with the Belarusian authorities.
Before, in 2015, the Polish minority’s political party’s leader slammed Ukraine’s Maidan protests in Ukraine and compared the Crimea annexation to Kosovo.
He also publicly wore the St. George ribbon, a Russian award for bravery established by the tsars in the early 19th century and now adopted by Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.
In early 2022, Tomaszewski was among the attendees of a far-right gathering in Madrid that also included Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, France’s Marine Le Pen and Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki.
The meeting in Madrid took place two months after a similar event in Warsaw. It was organised by Spain’s far-right party Vox. The LLRA head explained the participation of the LLRA being “a patriotic and Christian party.”
“I advocate for both Lithuania’s sovereignty and values, Christian Europe…There’s a threat, because leftists, liberals are becoming dominant in Europe,” W. Tomaszewski was quoted.
Although claiming to represent an ethnic minority group, Tomaszewski did not believe there could be a contradiction with nationalist policies advocated by some of the parties in the meeting.
Tomaszewski has also stressed that ethnic minorities and migrants are different.
“Immigrants do not have as many rights as ethnic minorities, they have not lived here for a hundred years. We should make a distinction here…If countries oppose migration, they oppose uncivilised migration,” he has said.
Notably, when seeking a MEP mandate in the past,
he partnered with Lithuania’s ethnic Russian party, the Russian Alliance.
He has been a member of the European Parliament since 2009 and sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists group, which also includes Spain’s Vox and Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
While the LLRA’s platform mainly focuses on the rights of the Polish minority in Lithuania, it has also campaigned on ultra-conservative issues, such as abortion ban, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, and a bigger role of religion (Catholicism) in public life.
When it comes to Pieszko, he was associated with the pro-Soviet organisation Yedinstvo and did not vote for Lithuanian independence on the 11th of March, 1990, according to to 15min.lt.
Needless to say, with the award bestowed, many in Lithuania were razzed, as, to some, this calls into question where Poland actually stands politically regarding Russia.
After the Polish PM’s Vilnius visit, exasperated Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis met on the 4th of May with Polish Ambassador to Lithuania Konstanty Radziwiłł and spoke about the issue of the Polish state awards given to the two Poles.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda also questioned the appropriateness of the awards.
Meanwhile, Mariusz Antonowicz, a lecturer at Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science, downplays the importance of the awards.
“I think we see quite a bit of over-reacting here. The awards are not of the highest importance, and it was a member of the PM Chancellery, one known for its strict stance on Lithuania, who proposed them to the persons in Lithuania,” he told BNN, adding that the gesture in form of the awards sits well in Poland’s foreign policy.
During his visit to Vilnius, M. Morawiecki met Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė and discussed regional security, support for Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression, the bilateral cooperation between Lithuania and Poland, and the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius.
The meeting took place on the eve of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations of the 3rd of May.
Amid formation of a new Lithuanian government in 2020, some NGOs, like Jūratė Juškaitė, who is part of the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights, warned that Lithuania is facing a moral choice – to support human rights in Poland the same way it does in Belarus and Russia, or choose what she called “the disastrous path” of backing Warsaw’s anti-democratic.
The Conservative-Liberal Lithuanian government has refrained from criticising the far-right Polish Cabinet.
In late 2021, amid the peak of EU–Poland row on the supremacy of laws, Šimonytė said that Warsaw’s row with Brussels over the supremacy of EU law is “unpleasant”, but a solution can be found.
President Gitanas Nausėda has also said that he expected Poland and the EU to find a compromise in what he described as a “legal dispute”.
As a reminder, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal has challenged the primacy of EU law over national law by ruling that several articles in the EU treaties are “incompatible” with the Polish constitution.
Only the Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, the Seimas, Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, has softly rebuked the Polish government for its anti-abortion stance. She said in late 2020 that reproductive rights and women’s freedom of choice are very important values for her and the ruling coalition she is part of.