“Who gives and takes away.” Sikorski harshly criticizes the decision of the Presidential Palace. It was about medals

The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski, announced on Thursday that the Ministry of Diplomacy had submitted 95 applications for medals for long service, 48 of which were accepted by the president. According to Sikorski, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not receive information on what criteria such a decision was made.

The presidential side claims, however, that the applications were too sparse, unsubstantive and did not provide grounds for awarding a state distinction from the president.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs submitted 95 applications for medals “For long service”, of which only 48 were accepted by the president. We have not received information on the basis of which criteria the seniority of half of the employees was considered worse,” Sikorski wrote on X.

Later he added another entry: “I wonder if the medal 'For long-term marriage' will also be subject to lustration now.”

Leśkiewicz: The Long Service Medal is not an award “for seniority alone”

The president's spokesman, Rafał Leśkiewicz, responded to the minister, also to X. “Dear Minister, the Long Service Medal is not an award 'for seniority alone'. The legislator provided it for people who have demonstrated exemplary and exceptionally conscientious performance of their duties. Therefore, the President took into account those applications in which such premises were reliably documented,” he wrote.

Leśkiewicz emphasized that seniority alone is not the only criterion for awarding this distinction. “I encourage you to put at least a little more care in preparing justifications for applications for Long Service Medals in the future,” added the president's spokesman.

In a later conversation with PAP, Leśkiewicz emphasized that the justifications for the applications from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which were not accepted, were “too scant, unsubstantive, and did not provide grounds for awarding a state distinction from the president.”

– And if we take into account statistics from previous years from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, many applications addressed to President Andrzej Duda, or to other ministries – for the award of medals for long-term service – were later returned without consideration. These conclusions must be better documented, the merits of employees cannot result solely from long experience in public administration. They must take into account additional issues specified in the Act. If such justifications were prepared, there would be no problem with awarding these distinctions, he noted.

The president's spokesman added that he was considering preparing appropriate statistics showing how such requests were taken into account in the previous dozen or so years. He assessed that Sikorski's entries are “a play on the note of broadly understood refusals – veto, refusal of nominations – to show that the president is poorly performing his constitutional duties.” – Meanwhile, this is something that has always been naturally present in the practice of every president's office – emphasized Leśkiewicz.

Sikorski asks the president's spokesman 2 questions

In the evening, Sikorski added another entry on X, in which he responds to the president's spokesman.

“If the reason is the assessment of these people, two questions arise: 1. Where does the President get the knowledge about MFA employees that is contrary to the recommendations of the ministry's human resources department? 2. Why did the KPRP demand the return of all the medals sent today?” – he wrote. “Whoever gives and takes away will languish in hell,” the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summed up the post.

Pursuant to the Act on Orders and Decorations, decorations are awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland – on his own initiative or at the request of, among others, the Prime Minister, ministers, heads of central offices and voivodes.

The Long Service Medal is a civilian decoration from the period of the Second Polish Republic, awarded for work in state service, restored to the system of state decorations in Poland in 2007. It is a reward for exemplary, exceptionally conscientious performance of duties resulting from professional work in the service of the state. The Long Service Medal is divided into three levels: gold, silver and bronze. (PAP)

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