Since his return to Polish politics in the summer of 2021, Donald Tusk has increasingly told such stories that his immediate environment should be interested in whether his health is going well.
Misrepresentations, half-truths and increasingly blatant lies are the content of his public speeches, incidentally he tries to take his decisions from the period when he was Prime Minister, and later President of the European Council, as only in the Polish interest, even if it went unfortunately completely different. Indeed, Tusk begins to attribute participation in strategic decisions about Poland’s independence from Russian energy resources to himself, despite the fact that there is too much information in the public space that it was quite the opposite.
What would Tusk have offered the Norwegians?
It was during his speech to voters in Sosnowiec that Tusk quite unexpectedly blurted out: “It just so happened that I was the first in Poland to offer the Norwegians a job on the Baltic Pipe.” This is not only a lie, but also an incredible impudence, because it was the government of Donald Tusk that blocked work on the Baltic Pipe as early as 2008, which was restarted in 2006-2007 by the government of Jarosław Kaczyński, after their earlier interruption by the government of Leszek Miller. It is almost unbelievable that a man who for years pursued a pro-German and therefore pro-Russian policy is now trying to attribute himself to a decision that clearly involved a withdrawal from Russia’s energy sources, in this case natural gas. .
Let us not forget that in 2001 the negotiations on the implementation of the investment in the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline were led by the AWS government of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek and it was agreed that the Norwegians would build a gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to the Polish coast (Niechorze), but the next government of Leszek Miller broke this agreement in 2003, self-declaring with the excess gas we have at our disposal. It should be emphasized on this occasion that the Norwegians were prepared at the time to finance the construction of this gas pipeline from their own resources, as they discovered more gas reserves on their shelf and were looking for permanent and reliable recipients of a large part of their production.
Tusk and Gazprom
Again, the agreement with these countries was negotiated by the first Law and Justice government in 2006-2007, but was broken in 2008 by the government of Donald Tusk, which was preparing to sign gas supplies to Russia under the contract, that would be in effect until 2037. In 2010, after a huge brawl in the Sejm, but also after intervention by the European Commission, the Tusk government finally decided to sign a gas contract with Gazprom, shortening the term to end of 2022.
Immediately after winning the elections in 2015, the United Right government returned to these negotiations and after long negotiations it was possible to convince the Norwegians and Danes to carry out this Baltic Pipe project.
The investment started in 2018 and despite some difficulties (due to environmental reasons, the construction of the gas pipeline in Denmark was delayed), it was completed in summer 2022 and after operational tests opened at the end of September at partial capacity due to delays on the part of Danish.
Now the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline is in full swing and together with the expansion of the gas terminal in Świnoujście and the gas interconnectors with Lithuania and Slovakia, it ensures Poland’s complete independence from Russian gas. Tusk, on the other hand, pursued a policy of making Poland dependent on Russian oil and gas, even if there were investment proposals that would make the country independent from it, or he opposed it, as in the case of the Baltic Pipe, or seriously delayed them, as in the case of the gas terminal in Świnoujście, the implementation of which only started in spring 2011, although it should have started in 2008.
Source: wPolityce