The EP will not deal with Romanowski's asylum in Hungary. PiS took advantage of the absence of MEPs

The European Parliament's Petitions Committee, during its vote on Tuesday, rejected a request to deal with the case of Hungary granting asylum to former Deputy Minister of Justice Marcin Romanowski. KO MEP Dariusz Joński announced the renewal of the application.

On Tuesday morning, the coordinators of the European Parliament's political groups gave the green light to convene a meeting of the Petitions Committee (PETI) in January, which would urgently deal with Romanowski's case. MEP Dariusz Joński requested an urgent procedure; a petition regarding the former deputy minister of justice was submitted by a Polish citizen.

As MEP Joński announced in an interview with PAP, in January PETI would demand from the European Commission, among others:

investigate whether Hungary has broken EU law by granting political asylum to Romanowski,

request that the EC send a request to the Hungarian authorities to immediately hand over Marcin Romanowski to the Polish authorities, in accordance with the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions.

On the initiative of PETI, a plenary debate would also be held in the EP on the abuse by some member states of the political asylum mechanism against people suspected of corruption crimes.

We also want sanctions against Member States that systematically refuse to cooperate in prosecuting economic and corruption crimes to be considered, Joński announced.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, MEPs present at the petitions committee meeting voted against taking up Romanowski's case.

According to Joński, the proposal was defeated by the votes of PiS MEPswho decided to take advantage of the fact that many MEPs were absent from Tuesday's meeting of the Petitions Committee, who were also participating in meetings of other EP committees at the same time. Joński himself was also absent from the vote, as he explained that he took part in the debate in the transport committee. – It is customary not to question the decisions of the coordinators, the MEPs who voted to reject the application did not respect this rule – said Joński.

As he added, Several PiS MEPs took part in the vote and are not even members of the petition committee, but took the place of absent MEPs.. In fact, the EP's rules of procedure allow for such a situation – MEPs who know that they will not be able to take part in the meeting may send their representatives. – This only shows panic among PiS supporters. They are trying to defend their colleague Marcin Romanowski at all costs, who faces up to 15 years in prison. Today, they even went so far as to defend the violation of international law, said the KO MEP.

The chairman of the petition committee and PiS MEP Bogdan Rzońca told PAP that the vote was in accordance with the procedures and that it was requested by Spanish MEP Diego Solier from the European Conservatives and Reformists group, to which PiS also belongs. – In the morning, at the coordinators' meeting, a decision was made to deal with this application. But at today's meeting, a member of parliament from Spain came from the floor and reported that he opposed the opening of this petition and wanted a vote on this matter. I read that the regulations allow for such a possibility and I checked whether we had a quorum, said MEP Rzońca.

To hold a vote, there had to be nine MEPs in the room. There were ten: nine voted to reject the Romanowski case, one voted against. A total of 35 MEPs sit on the PETI committee. – If the remaining MEPs had come to vote, maybe they would have won. And they simply weren't there, said Rzońca.

Joński has already announced that he will submit the application again. – The coordinators will deal with it in January. Today's vote only resulted in the Romanowski case being postponed by two or three weeks, the KO politician assured.

From Brussels Jowita Kiwnik-Pargana (PAP)

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