Tuesday, January 26, 2016

"Washington warns Warsaw: we follow EU’s probe “very closely”"

One of the original purposes of this blog was to act as publicly searchable bookmarks.
I have a feeling we'll be referring back to this comment by the U.S. official and wanted to make certain we could find it.
Lifted in toto from NeuEurope:
US Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters during his visit to Google Campus in Warsaw on January 24 that Washington is carefully following the recent development s in Poland.
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Reporters asked him if the United States is concerned about the European Union’s rule of law inquiry into Poland and Standard and Poor’s cut to Warsaw’s credit rating. He said: “As a fellow democracy we do follow developments here very closely. We certainly do follow it. As a democracy, we want to make sure that Poland’s democracy continues to address the issues.”
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As reported by the Reuters news agency, the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, has launched an unprecedented inquiry into whether Warsaw’s new nationalist-minded government has breached the bloc’s democracy standards in taking more control of the judiciary and public media.
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Standard and Poor’s unexpectedly cut Poland’s credit rating a notch earlier this month – Warsaw’s first-ever downgrade, saying the new government has weakened the independence of key institutions and the rating could fall further.