In Warsaw, thousands of demonstrators protested against the law 9 January at public television headquarters.
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“The Polish government must know that one can not infringe on certain basic values in the European Union”, he added.
The Polish Foreign Ministry summons to the German ambassador follows last week’s adoption of a controversial new media law. However, opponents say officials from the ruling Law and Justice party routinely boycotted media programs and did not respond to invitations.
Oettinger, responsible for the bloc’s policy on society, said last week the EU’s largest eastern member should be put under supervision over its plans to put Polish public TV and radio broadcasters under state control and to change the makeup of the constitutional court.
A new head of the public broadcasting agency is to be named on Monday.
The EU executive has written to Poland asking how the new media law, giving the treasury minister the right to appoint heads of state-run broadcasters, tallies with EU rules on media freedoms. And then it used its parliamentary majority to bring the public service media under party control.
Replying to the letter, the Foreign Ministry said Poland fully recognised media freedom and the European Commission might have been provided with misleading information with a bias against the Polish government.
“We won’t back off, we’ll walk forward, we’ll be solving more problems to make Poles happier and Poland stronger”, Mr. Kaczynski told a rally of supporters.
The International Federation of Journalists and its seven partner organizations with the Council of Europe (CoE) on its Online Platform for the promotion of journalism and the safety of journalists have lodged a protest to CoE Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland over the new law.
In response, the recently elected government of the Law and Justice party, known in Polish as the PiS, points to its democratic mandate and the unconstitutional behavior of its liberal predecessor.
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A US State Department spokesman said: “We are concerned: we care deeply about the character, the quality of Poland’s democracy”.
