Donald Tusk said that he had spoken to Viktor Orbán about the case of former deputy minister Marcin Romanowski, who is wanted under a European Arrest Warrant.
“Prime Minister Orbán does not like accountability. He told me so directly when explaining the asylum decision”, Tusk wrote on social media platform X.
On Thursday, Hungary offered to protect Romanowski, who served under the former government that was led by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
“If there were to be some strange decisions in Budapest that are not in accordance with European law – like a political asylum and not respecting the European Arrest Warrant - it is not me who will be in a difficult situation, but Viktor Orbán,” Tusk told reporters in Brussels on Saturday.
Polish prosecutors accuse Romanowski of 11 crimes related to defrauding money from a special fund he oversaw in his role as a deputy justice minister in the last PiS-led government in the years 2019-2023.
Orbán, who has long enjoyed a friendly relationship with PiS, which is now Poland’s largest opposition group, has already professed further support for politicians seeking refuge.
“To be honest, I think that this is not going to be the last decision of this kind,” he said.
The investigation into Romanowski’s case has been increasingly gathering momentum after a coalition led by Tusk’s center-right Civic Coalition (KO) grouping took the helm of the Polish government in 2023.
Romanowski himself said that he was not attempting to evade authorities and that, up to the moment of applying for asylum, he was “functioning quite normally here in Budapest,” accusing the Polish prosecutor’s office of turning his case into a “political circus”.
Holding politicians from the previous administration accountable for alleged abuses of power has been one of the main campaign pledges made by KO.
The political grouping will hope to deliver on these promises before the first round of the presidential elections which will take place in May 2025.
If KO wins in the presidential election, it will be able to end the uneasy cohabitation between the president and the cabinet. The incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, was elected on the PiS ticket but cannot run for re-election due to a two-term limit.
KO’s presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski has called Orbán’s decision to grant asylum “like something from a banana republic,” and said that PiS must be prevented from returning to power, which he believes would result in “pardoning of people who broke the law.”
PiS politicians “burdened by this type of baggage” must choose between Minsk or Budapest when fleeing Poland, he added, echoing an earlier statement from Tusk in which the prime minister likened Romanowski’s case to a scandal involving
Tomasz Szmydt, a former Polish judge accused of espionage who was granted asylum by Belarus.
![“If there were to be some strange decisions in Budapest that are not in accordance with European law [...] it is not me who will be in a difficult situation, but Viktor Orbán,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk (L) said of his Hungarian counterpart (R). Photos: PAP/Marcin Obara; PAP/EPA/ZOLTAN MATHE HUNGARY OUT](http://s.tvp.pl/images/5/1/0/uid_510a9b176368436a9526818b5fd809cf_width_700_play_0_pos_3_gs_0.jpg)
