Poland's right-wing premier has ruled out teaming up with France's far-right National Rally but said his party was "ready to talk" with Italian and Spanish anti-immigrant and ultra-nationalist parties vying to enter the European Parliament.
"We're flexible, but we rule out an alliance with a parliamentary group including the French National Front," Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, using the former name of Marine Le Pen's party, in an interview published today by the Polska The Times daily.
"We're ready to talk with (Italian deputy prime minister Matteo) Salvini's (League) party, with the Spanish party Vox and with others," he added as voters were poised to elect a new European Parliament on Sunday.
"We're euro-realists and I'm sure that the composition of the new European Parliament will be more favourable to a reform of Europe as desired by citizens and not only technocrats," Mr Morawiecki said, evoking his Law and Justice (PiS) party's call for a more decentralised EU.
Powerful PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has long been a fierce critic of the strong brand of EU federalism championed by EU powerhouses Germany and France.
He is among a growing number of populist leaders in the EU advocating a reform agenda for the bloc that favours national sovereignty over further integration and federalism.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said earlier this month that her "hand was always extended" to the PiS, but Jaroslaw Kaczynski has ruled out any such cooperation due to her party's links to Moscow.
Mr Kaczynski's deep suspicion of Russia is rooted in the deadly 2010 crash of a presidential jet there which claimed the life of his twin brother, then president Lech Kaczynski, among others.
Relations soured further in the wake of Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
