A knife-edge vote saw the MEP take leadership of the Parliament’s petitions committee, as centrist parties seek to maintain a cordon sanitaire against the far-right.
ADVERTISEMENTPoland’s Bogdan Rzońca has become the first member of Poland’s controversial right-wing Law and Justice Party, PiS, to chair a European Parliament committee, after winning a knife-edge vote today (23 July).
Rzońca won the chairmanship of the petitions committee with 17 votes in favour, 16 against and one abstention, in a secret ballot that may be seen as eroding a cordon sanitaire against the far-right.
Law and Justice held power in Warsaw from 2015-2023, becoming increasingly estranged from Brussels in a series of fights over judicial independence and the rule of law.
New Prime Minister Donald Tusk, from the centre-right Civic Coalition, has sought to repair relations and in May was taken out of the EU’s Article 7 procedure, thus removing the threat of the country losing EU voting rights.
The Parliament has sought to keep extremist parties out of influential positions in the Parliament, but the rule does not apply consistently to members of the hard-right Conservatives and Reformists grouping (ECR) to which Rzońca belongs.
Johan Van Overtveldt of Belgium’s New Flemish Alliance, which sits in ECR, was today re-elected to chair the parliament’s budget committee, while members of the far-right Patriots for Europe group were excluded from chairing panels on culture and transport.
The secret ballot was requested by the committee’s socialist grouping, and followed criticism of the sole candidate by Michał Kobosko, from Poland’s Liberal Polska 2050 party.
Rzońca's party “didn’t reply to the needs of citizens expressed during street demonstrations” against government policy, Kobosko said, questioning whether Rzońca would be able to reply to queries from “those that are not ideologically in line with what you believe,” such as gay and transgender people and other minorities.
“I have no problem talking to any persons who have different views,” Rzonca replied. "I have no prejudice against anyone.”
With just 35 members, the Petitions Committee is among the smallest of the Parliament’s 24 panels, and deals directly with issues raised by EU citizens.