POLAND: Attracting the Polish Diaspora & more – 7th Nov 2024

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 7th of November twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s kick off this edition with foreign affairs. On Wednesday, the 6th, President Andrzej Duda congratulated Donald Trump for winning the US presidential elections. He tweeted, “Congratulations, Mr. President Trump! You made it happen!”

While President Duda has always rooted for Trump, the Polish government was skeptical since Trump may not support NATO, Poland, and Ukraine financially like the Biden administration did. So Prime Minister Tusk said that the EU should strengthen its own military and political power to be as independent as possible from the US. On the other hand, the government still finds room to have good relations with Trump, as Adam Szłapka, Poland’s EU Minister, said Trump will be Poland's ally in security matters.

Similarly, on Sunday, the 3rd, Mariusz Błaszczak, the former defense minister of the previous Law and Justice government, demanded Tusk resign after Trump won. He said that because the PM didn’t like the American president-elect, Poland would have poor security relations with the US.

Last month, we reported that the Polish government banned the right of asylum for people from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, which could potentially lead to a labor shortage in the country. However, on Thursday, the 31st of October, the government announced that they would try to attract the Polish diaspora to return to the nation.

Radosław Sikorski, the foreign minister, said that there are roughly twenty million Polish descendants living abroad, and the government will issue a Polish card for them to benefit from citizenship rights in Poland. Moreover, the government will reorganize and fund the support for Polish communities abroad, along with initiatives for expatriates to return home, pursue education in Poland, and find jobs. Sikorski said that currently, the wages and working conditions are way better in the country than ten years ago.

However, some are not satisfied with working conditions in Poland. On Tuesday, the 5th, 10,000 police officers in different cities simultaneously took sick leave and started a nationwide protest to demand higher wages and the social benefits soldiers receive, including housing allowances, real vacation subsidies, and retirement after eighteen years of service.

They called the protest Operation Lucyna, referring to the health workers’ two thousand seven protest, where some of them, including a nurse named Lucyna, said they had the bird flu.

According to the national newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the number of protesters could increase to 20,000 just before the 11th of November, the country's Independence Day. Officers affiliated with the police unions will wait for a response from the Ministry of the Interior until the 15th of November. If they don’t receive a satisfactory answer, they’ll take action.

In an update to a story from last week’s episode: On Thursday, the 31st of October, the progressive party Razem announced they started their own opposition after they withdrew from the coalition with the Left party last week. The Razem party also demanded the immediate dismissal of Jacek Tomczak, the Deputy Minister of Development and Technology, for favoring developers and banks over the interests of citizens. According to the Razem Party, Tomczak enabled housing programs in which banks and businesses earned more with increasing prices while citizens with low income, especially young people, were unable to afford houses in the country. Two weeks ago, we reported that in recent years, it has become way harder to afford a house in the country.

On a positive note, on Wednesday, the 6th, the European Union finally dropped Article seven on sanctions regarding the rule of law in the country against Poland. The European Commission started the procedure in twenty seventeen due to concerns over judicial independence during the Law and Justice government because the executive started to involve itself in the judiciary system. The procedure blocked over seventy billion dollars of EU funds flowing to Poland, and the case could have led to further sanctions, including the loss of Poland's voting rights in the EU Council.

The Tusk government, which came to power in twenty twenty-three, started to reduce the involvement of politics in the judiciary and gave the power to appoint judges to other judges, not to politicians or the parliament. After the successful reform to bring the rule of law back, the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that this was a new chapter for Poland.

Going back to the topic of elections for a minute. On Monday, the 4th, Duda and Tusk said that they were happy that Poland did not lose Moldova as an ally after pro-Western candidate and current President Maia Sandu won Moldova’s presidential race against the pro-Russian candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo. Tusk tweeted that despite Russia's aggressive and extensive interference in the Moldovan presidential elections, Moldovans proved that they would not give their country away to Russia. Previously, Tusk announced Poland’s full support for Moldova’s potential EU membership.

On a sad note, there was a sharp rise in the usage of fentanyl, a substance 100 times more toxic than heroin. A person can die just by inhaling even a little amount of fentanyl particles. Normally, the health sector uses fentanyl as a painkiller since it is fifty times more effective than morphine.

A few weeks earlier, the Health Ministry said that it had received its first death reports caused by fentanyl in Poland. On Tuesday, the 5th, it prohibited doctors from prescribing pills that contained medical fentanyl and marijuana during a phone consultation. From now on, doctors can only prescribe these pills in a face-to-face consultation after they receive the patient’s medical history.

This year drug dealers obtained 350,000 packages of prescription medical marijuana from doctors and sold them to individuals.

In other news, Poland’s Catholic Church has always said that Halloween is anti-Christian and alien to Polish culture and tradition. However, on Thursday, the 31st of October, the country celebrated Halloween with various events. Participation in Halloween celebrations is gaining popularity in Poland each year, despite the Church recommending celebrating Catholic All Saints' Day on the 1st of November.

In the midst of religious debates, on Monday, the 4th, police started an investigation after parents found sharp items, including needles and pins, in candy given to children during Halloween celebrations. There were reports of sharp items in sweets in Gniezno, a city in west-central Poland, in Kociewie city in the northern region, the Silesia region in the south, and Lublin in the east of Poland. Russian intelligence services could be involved since Russia organized arsons in shopping centers last week.

And to wrap up this edition, on the upcoming Monday, the 11th, Poland will celebrate Independence Day with large-scale celebrations. This year, Poland celebrates the 105th anniversary of its independence, after over a century of partitions by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Piotr Gliński, the Culture Minister, announced a variety of festivities, including nationwide anthem singing at noon, the annual Independent Poland Festival in Warsaw on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, and a special concert in Warsaw’s Polski Theatre on the night of Sunday, the 10th.

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

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