PM Morawiecki rejects criticism regarding media law reform adopted by parliament

In a tumultuous sitting of parliament on Wednesday, Polish lawmakers passed a bill that would strengthen a ban on firms from outside the European Economic Area controlling Polish broadcasters.

The opposition says the bill aims to gag the news channel TVN24, which is owned by U.S.-based media group Discovery Inc and is critical of the right-wing nationalist government.

"Media pluralism and diversity of opinions are what strong democracies welcome, not fight against," the Vice President of the European Union's executive, Vera Jourova, who is responsible for media freedom, said on Twitter.

"The draft Polish broadcasting law sends a negative signal. We need a #MediaFreedomAct in the whole EU to uphold media freedom and support the rule of law," she added.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was "deeply troubled" by the passage of the bill, which he said targeted the most-watched independent news station in Poland and one of the largest U.S. investments in the country.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denied this.

"We do not have any intentions regarding a specific TV channel, it is just about tightening the regulations, so that there is no situation in which companies from outside the European Union would buy media in Poland," he told a news conference.

Blinken had also called on Poland not to proceed with legislation that is expected to make it harder for Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers during the Holocaust and kept by postwar Communist rulers.

Morawiecki said the law was implementing a 2015 ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that a deadline must be set after which faulty administrative decisions can no longer be challenged.

"This has nothing to do with the fears expressed by our American friends about us," he said.