Tributes pour in for Polish leader

EU leaders and officials pay their respects after Poland’s “unimaginable catastrophe”.

The European Union’s three main institutions lowered their flags to half-mast today as a mark of respect for Poland’s President Lech Kaczyński and the other 95 Poles killed when their plane crashed in Smolensk on Saturday (10 April).

Tributes from the European Parliament, the European Commission and member states poured in for Kaczyński, his wife and the other victims of the crash, including leading members of the Polish parliament, three deputy ministers and the country’s top military commanders.

The president and others were to have attended a private service in western Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies in Polish history, the Second World War massacre of Polish officers by Soviet secret police at Katyn.

Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, who worked closely with Kaczyński in the Solidarity movement that brought down communism in Poland, and during Buzek’s tenure as Polish premier, called Kaczyński’s death and those of the others “an unimaginable catastrophe”.

“Never before in Europe have so many high ranking officials…died in a plane crash. They were on duty in the name of the citizens,” said Buzek.

His office said he would attend official events of commemoration in Warsaw on Tuesday and Wednesday. A date for the state funeral has not yet been set. A book of condolences was already being signed at the European Parliament today.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the Commission, called Kaczyński “a very determined Polish patriot” who was also committed to the EU project.

MEPs across party lines added to the tributes to the late president, who at times ruffled feathers among EU officials and other member states in Brussels in defence of his country’s independence.

Martin Schulz, leader of the centre-left Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, called the death of the president and the others a “shocking tragedy”, while Joseph Daul, leader of the centre-right European People’s Party, called the accident “a great loss to Poland”.

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Members of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, which included Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party, expressed their shock at the tragedy and defended the president’s tough line on Europe.

“Leftists resented him for pursuing a policy of lustration: that is, of requiring public servants to declare whether they had played a role in the previous communist regime,” Daniel Hannan, a UK Conservative MEP, wrote on his blog. “Lech Kaczyński was a patriot: a man who never collaborated with the dictators or accepted the occupation of his country by the Red Army”.

The tributes echoed comments of shock and sorrow expressed by European leaders across the EU.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said “all of Germany” was mourning with Poles.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish premier, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, said all flags would be flown at half-mast at EU buildings, adding that the victims of the crash would be honoured with two minutes of silence before EU meetings held today.