POLAND: Asylum Right Suspended & more – 17th Oct 2024

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 17th of October twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s kick off with new policies. On Saturday, the 12th, Prime Minister Tusk announced that Poland suspended the right to seek asylum for immigrants coming from the Middle East, especially those who enter from the Belarusian border. Tusk said Russian and Belarussian leaders were exploiting the right to asylum and helping a lot of illegal immigrants to cross the Polish border to destabilize the country.

This move received backlash from the EU and several human rights groups. The European Commission said that member states must ensure that asylum seekers' rights are respected. The Commission also said that the new policies violate international obligations under EU law, condemning Poland for potentially breaching human rights standards and exposing asylum seekers to significant risks.

The government will also address visa procedures. Radosław Sikorski , the Foreign Minister, said the ministry would fix loopholes in visa procedures that the Law and Justice party -the previous administration - created to sell Polish visas to third-world nationals. Moreover, the ministry will cancel the Business Harbour program, which issued visas for IT specialists from Ukraine, Georgia, Russia, and Armenia. The government suspects that the program misused its power and allowed some applicants to bypass visa regulations.

Yet the ministry added that all these regulations didn’t mean that Poland would not accept any foreigners.

On that note about asylum seekers, on Thursday, the 10th, a study by pollster CBOS showed that Polish people’s opinion of Ukrainian refugees got worse in recent years. In March twenty twenty-two, when the Russian aggression started, the same study showed that ninety-four percent of Poles supported accepting Ukrainian refugees. However, in this year’s study, it’s only fifty-three percent. The vast majority of the respondents, sixty-seven percent, think that Poland should send Ukrainian men back to their country to fight for their nation.

In some news on foreign affairs, this week, Israel attacked the United Nations peacekeeping forces two times in Lebanon, and seventeen UN soldiers were injured. On Saturday, the 11th, Władysław Kosiniak, the Polish Defense Minister, said the actions were unacceptable and that UN peacekeepers should remain unharmed according to international law. Currently, Poland contributes to UN peacekeeping forces with 250 soldiers. Kosiniak reassured that the incidents did not directly affect the Polish troops stationed in Lebanon. He also asked President Duda to appoint an ambassador to Israel to oversee these issues more easily. The country does not have an ambassador in Israel because it downgraded diplomatic relations with the country after an incident in twenty twenty-one when Poland restricted property claims for Holocaust survivors to regulate numerous legal disputes.

In internal affairs… On Saturday, the 12th, Law and Justice, the main opposition party, merged with Sovereign Poland, another right-wing nationalistic party. Jarosław Kaczyński, the Nationalistic Law and Justice leader, said that the decision would send a positive message to society, conveying that the national patriotic camp is uniting.

The two parties also signed an ideological declaration that has twelve points, which include opposing the EU’s Green Deal and any of the EU’s decisions that violate Poland’s security and sovereignty, advocating for Polish family values over gender ideology and same-sex marriage debates, and addressing grievances against Prime Minister Donald Tusk's administration,

While the Law and Justice party cooperates with new allies, Donald Tusk is counting the days left until President Andrzej Duda’s term ends in twenty twenty-five. On Thursday, the 10th, Tusk shared on Twitter that only 299 days were left, reflecting his dissatisfaction with the President.

Tusk posted the tweet after trying to convince Duda to appoint new ambassadors to several countries because the law requires the president's permission. The government has withdrawn previous ambassadors from fifty countries, such as the US and Ukraine, to replace them with new appointees aligned with the current administration's policies.

However, Duda did not agree with appointing new ones. Now, chargé d'affaires in those countries oversee diplomatic relations. This internal conflict might undermine Poland’s international relations as only ambassadors can conduct full diplomatic duties in a country.

Speaking of Duda and Tusk, on Tuesday, the 15th, the President spoke in the parliament to mark the first year of the new government rule and criticized the new administration in several ways. He said that the Tusk's government interfered with the justice system and unjustly fired judges. Remember that the Tusk government conducted several reforms in the justice system to ensure the rule of law, as the EU required Poland to do so.

Duda also criticized Tusk for unjustly firing ambassadors in fifty countries and not cooperating with the president in making these decisions. The President emphasized that Poland's spectacular development was largely the result of the measures by the previous Law and Justice government.

However, he thanked the defense minister for his determination to develop the Polish army with new equipment and appreciated the government's response to the latest flood disaster.

On Monday, the 14th, Belarusian President Lukashenko banned Polish clothing brands from Belarus. Lukashenko said that Polish products did not meet the required standards and were allegedly unsafe for consumers’ health. The ban affects a wide range of clothing items, including jackets, sweaters, vests, blouses, and children’s underwear. The public believes that the ban took place because relations between both countries have worsened significantly since the invasion of Ukraine. Polskie Radio said that the decision will hit the Polish clothing sector hard, as a lot of Belarusians prefer Polish brands.

The workforce is offering worrying pictures. On Wednesday, the 16th, the Polish Economic Institute said that Poland will lose two million workers by twenty thirty-five due to aging in all sectors. The country should compensate for the shortage and encourage the labor force to work, have immigration plans, and advance automation and robotics.

For instance, in education, on Tuesday, the 15th, the Teach for Poland Foundation published the results of their recent study about the education system and aging teachers. The foundation stated that thirty-six percent of teachers in schools were over fifty years old in twenty twenty-three, with forty-four percent for early childhood education. Meanwhile, only five percent of teachers were below thirty. In twenty forty, the foundation expects seventy-three percent of teachers over fifty in early childhood education.

These figures show that young people do not want to be teachers mainly due to low wages and a heavy workload. Despite the latest wage increase at the beginning of the year, the average teacher salary is only two percent higher than the average salary in the national economy.

Let’s wrap up this edition with some ecological news. On Sunday the 14th, Poland marked International E-Waste Day, and NGOs reminded people about the importance of recycling electronic waste. ElektroEko, a Polish NGO that seeks to champion recycling, said that people store unused electronics at home or throw them in the garbage. ElektroEko urged them to hand over unused or broken electronics to recycling centers in the country because recycling them can contribute to nature. The NGO says it has helped collect around 1.5 million metric tons of e-waste since ElektroEko introduced the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment collection system in Poland in two thousand six.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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