Summer-loving PM Tusk Poland’s Berlusconi?

As we reported earlier this week, with temperatures hitting 30 degrees in Warsaw on Monday, a female reporter from Polish Radio asked the prime minister at a press conference whether everything was “buttoned up” for Poland's forthcoming EU presidency, starting on 1 July.

The prime minister then made the unfortunate pun that he has since come to regret.

“I'm looking at the lady's dress and buttoning up is not what comes to mind,” he said. “I like summer.”

Tusk later tried to brush off the remark as “harmless” and “off-the-cuff” but international media have picked up on the quote.

“It seems that among Europe's elite the ability to make unbelievably clumsy remarks is not the sole preserve of Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. Things reached a pretty pass for Polish prime minister Donald Tusk this week after he made a less-than-statesmanlike pass at a radio reporter,” writes the UK’s Metro.

Bunga-bunga

Back in Poland, though Tusk does not normally have a reputation for making lewd remarks, opposition MP Adam Hofman from the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party couldn't resist a dig at the PM.

“I know that sexuality is a good seller, and that the macho style in politics pays, but Donald Tusk ought to beware,” he told Newsweek Polska, “ as smiling machismo is just a step away from the disgrace of bunga-bunga.”

Feminists lost no time to pounce on Tusk's blunder. Izabela Stawicka from the Women's Party has called for the prime minister to be reprimanded by the Parliamentary Ethics Committee. (nh/pg)