Hungary sparks dispute with Poland by granting asylum to former minister

Poland has accused Hungary of acting in a hostile manner by granting political asylum to a former Polish deputy justice minister accused of defrauding the state.

Marcin Romanowski, 48, faces 11 charges in Poland, including defrauding or attempting to defraud $40 million (£32 million; €39 million) from a justice fund intended to help victims of crimes when he served as Deputy Minister of Justice under the previous Law and Justice government. -Government led between 2019 and 2023.

“We consider that the decision of Viktor Orban’s government to grant political asylum to Romanowski, suspected of criminal offenses and wanted under a European arrest warrant, is an act hostile to the Republic of Poland and the principles of the European Union,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote in X on Thursday evening.

“Tomorrow we will announce our decisions.”

On Friday, the Foreign Ministry said it would summon Hungary’s ambassador to the country and ask the European Commission to launch proceedings against Budapest if it fails to meet its obligations to the EU.

Romanowski was responsible for the justice fund during the previous government that lost power in the 2023 elections.

An audit found that only 40% of fund resources went to crime victims and rehabilitation of former prisoners, and that contracts were issued at the minister’s discretion without competitive due process.

Romanowski denies the charges.

He fled to Hungary, saying he would not receive a fair trial in his homeland because of politicized prosecutors and judges under Poland’s current pro-EU coalition government under Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Government officials scoffed at that reasoning, given that the Law and Justice-led government in which Romanowski served was widely condemned by international judicial bodies, the European Commission and European courts for introducing reforms that politicized the judiciary.

The Tusk government is trying to undo that reform because it created a two-tier judicial system of judges appointed under Law and Justice and older judges, some of whom do not recognize new judges because they consider their appointments illegal.

Law and Justice and Romanowski have accused the current government of making illegal judicial appointments in its efforts to undo that reform.

As of Thursday night, the 48-year-old opposition lawmaker had not been seen for almost two weeks.

He had reportedly not used his phones or bank cards since December 6 and did not attend a court hearing three days later where it was ruled that he must be remanded in custody before trial.

On Thursday, a Warsaw court issued a European arrest warrant based on information from prosecutors that he had fled to an EU country.

There had been speculation that Mr Romanowski was hiding in Hungary.

On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the current Polish government was treating Hungary as an enemy and would offer refuge to anyone facing political persecution in Poland.

Orban and Poland’s Law and Justice party share ideological goals even though they clashed over the Russian invasion and war against Ukraine.

Broadly speaking, they agree that what they see as a liberal EU elite is moving Europe away from its Christian traditions and eroding the sovereignty of member states.

Romanowski is reportedly a member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, who denied earlier this week that they were hiding the MP.

In October 2022, he told a Polish Catholic radio station that LGBT+ was an “institutionalized deviance.”

A year later he advocated the death penalty, even for minors, after teenagers beat a 16-year-old boy to death.