POLAND:Poland's notorious Radio Maryja, broadcaster of prayers and rants against Jews, homosexuals and the EU, is in line for €15 million in European funding.
A journalism school run by the station, the Higher School of Social and Media Culture, is one of 300 institutions recommended by the Polish government for EU money, according to the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.
EU officials in Brussels confirmed the report yesterday but denied it meant that the station would get any funding.
The radio station is headed by firebrand monk Father Tadeusz Rydzyk and it broadcasts a mixture of prayer, discussion and polemic to an audience of around one million in rural Poland. The radio station and its sister television station, TV Trwam, helped twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski secure their presidential and parliamentary election victories in 2005.
The government responded by making Father Rydzyk the in-house information service, ignoring international complaints that the station broadcast anti-Semitic views, Holocaust denial and hate speech.
The alliance has suffered of late after the twins refused to back Radio Maryja's campaign for a blanket ban on abortion.
President Lech Kaczynski's wife, Maria, even publicly signed a declaration in support of the existing laws allowing restricted abortion.
A Polish magazine published a recording transcript of Father Rydzyk at a closed-door conference allegedly calling the first lady a "witch" because of her support for limited abortion.
On the same tape, he allegedly attacks her husband as a "fraudster" who is in the pockets of the "Jewish lobby".
A recent meeting Father Rydzyk had with Pope Benedict prompted outcry from Jewish and gay rights groups.
