Relations between Brussels and Poland’s hardline Eurosceptic government have deteriorated further after a Polish magazine published a cover portraying five leading EU politicians – including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel – in Nazi uniforms beneath the headline These people want to control Poland again.
The photoshopped image on the front of popular weekly Wprost showed Merkel, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, European parliament president Martin Schulz, EU commissioner Günther Oettinger, and Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister, leaning over a map, echoing wartime photographs of Adolf Hitler and his generals.
In a post on his Facebook page, Verhofstadt, who heads the liberal Alde group in the European parliament, described the image as “outrageous”, adding that the EU was a “community of values” and that it was “the duty of all of us – commissioners, chancellors or not, to raise our voice when a government is endangering these principles and attacking democratic institutions”. » | Jon Henley | Tuesday, January 12, 2016
