Poland’s justice minister says it would be unacceptable for the European Union to force the conservative country to legalize gay marriage so it can get EU financial aid.
“There is a real risk that we may find ourselves in a situation where the EC (European Commission) will effectively force us to introduce the so-called homosexual marriages with the right to adopt children,” Zbigniew Ziobro told a news conference Monday, Reuters reports. “We cannot agree to this under any circumstances.”
Some EU leaders at the tough budget talks in Brussels have demanded member states adhere to so-called democratic values or payment would be blocked.
Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party and President Andrzej Duda were reelected last week in part because of their pledges to ban gay couples from adopting children and forbidding schools from teaching about civil rights for homosexuals.
Duda has called gay rights an “ideology” worse than communism.
Polish gay rights activist Alicja Sienkiewicz says Duda is treating the LGBT community as the enemies of the state.
“This is bizarre. If you want to get these (EU) funds, you should automatically accept how the EU expects them to be spent, because adhering to the rule of law means adhering to basic human rights, and it is about respecting them,” she said.
Poland could lose billions of dollars in COVID-19 recovery money and other aid if it fails to live up to what the EU regards as democratic standards.