Hungary quarreled with Poland, giving asylum to the ex-minister

Poland has accused Hungary of hostile acts by granting political asylum to Poland’s former deputy justice minister, accused of defrauding the state.

Marcin Romanowski, 48, faces 11 charges in Poland, including defrauding or attempting to defraud $40m (£32m; €39m) from a justice fund designed to help victims of crime when he was deputy justice minister in previous Law and Justice. headed the government in the period from 2019 to 2023.

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

“Tomorrow we will announce our decisions.”

On Friday, the foreign ministry said it was summoning Hungary’s ambassador to the country and would ask the European Commission to initiate legal proceedings against Budapest if it fails to meet its EU obligations.

Mr. Romanovsky was in charge of the justice fund under the previous government, which lost power in the 2023 election.

The audit found that only 40% of the funds’ resources went to the rehabilitation of crime victims and ex-prisoners, and that contracts were awarded at the Minister’s discretion without a proper competitive process.

Mr. Romanovsky denies the accusations.

He fled to Hungary, saying he would not receive a fair trial at home because of politicized prosecutors and judges under Poland’s current pro-European coalition government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Government officials scoffed at such an argument, given that the Law and Justice-led government in which Mr Romanovsky served had been widely condemned by international judicial bodies, the European Commission and European courts for introducing reforms that politicized the judiciary.

Mr. Tusk’s government is trying to reverse this reform because it created a two-tier judicial system of judges appointed under Law and Justice and senior judges, some of whom do not recognize new judges because they consider their appointments illegal.

Law and Justice and Mr. Romanovsky accused the current government of illegally appointing judges in an attempt to reverse the reform.

Until Thursday evening, the 48-year-old opposition MP had been gone for almost two weeks.

He has reportedly not used his phones or bank cards since December 6 and failed to attend a court hearing three days later that ordered him to be remanded in custody pending trial.

On Thursday, a Warsaw court issued a European arrest warrant, acting on information from the prosecutor’s office that he had fled to an EU country.

There were speculations that Romanovsky was hiding in Hungary.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Thursday that the current Polish government treats Hungary as an enemy and will offer asylum to anyone facing political persecution in Poland.

Mr Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice party share ideological goals, even though they have drifted apart over Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine.

They generally agree that what they see as the EU’s liberal elite is pushing Europe away from its Christian traditions and eroding the sovereignty of member states.

Mr Romanowski is reported to be a member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, which earlier this week denied the MP was hiding with them.

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

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