Poland's new conservative prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski painted a picture of a tolerant, gay-friendly Poland on his first visit to Brussels, but warned that any new EU constitution must give Warsaw real clout in EU-decision making.
"I ask you not to believe in the myth of Poland as an anti-semitic, homophobic and xenophobic country," he stated to a packed press room on Wednesday (30 August) after a "cordial" 45 minute meeting with European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso.
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.