POLAND: European Funds & more – 7th May 2024

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

Let’s start off with an update on the European Union’s blocked funds. Recall that in twenty seventeen, the EU initiated a set of procedures against Poland because the government at the time, headed by the Law and Justice party, violated the principle of the rule of law and increased its power and influence on the judicial system. As a result, the EU stopped transferring funds worth more than sixty billion dollars to Poland.

However, on Monday, the 6th, the EU finally dropped the rule of law case as the new liberal government made the judiciary independent. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, wrote a tweet thanking Donald Tusk and his cabinet for their efforts.

Up next, on Tuesday, the 7th, government officials attended the European Economic Congress in Katowice, which focused on energy transformation and the security of the EU.

However, security found eavesdropping devices in a room where Donald Tusk and his cabinet were going to hold a meeting. Currently, the police are searching for the perpetrators. Security said that Russia might be boosting its spy activities in Poland because Poland started transporting military aid to Ukraine after the US Congress approved a massive aid package for the country.

On Wednesday, the 1st, the country celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its accession to the European Union. Donald Tusk, the prime minister, praised politicians such as Lech Wałęsa, the president at the time, and the former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who initiated Poland's entry process into the EU. However, he also condemned the top leaders of the former Law and Justice government who deteriorated relations with the EU between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty-three.

Even though President Duda thinks the EU has too much power over Poland and interferes with internal matters, he still said in his speech that being a member of the Union is in the country's interest since the EU financially helps Poland sustain its economy. However, he still criticized the EU’s initiatives that increase the union’s power, such as immigration or climate-change laws that countries must comply with to stay a member.

Moving on to recent new policies… In the previous months, the parliament supported a law on buying the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription for girls over fifteen years old, but President Andrzej Duda vetoed the decision. He believes that this will negatively affect the nation because it will decrease the birth rate.

However, the liberal government hasn’t given up and issued a cabinet decree: On Wednesday the 1st, a new regulation on morning-after pills came into effect. Now people will need only a pharmacist’s prescription and not a doctor’s to get the pill. To abolish prescriptions altogether, the government requires approval from the parliament and the president.

However, this does not mean that every pharmacy will sell the pill. Pharmacies have to say if they are on board with the new regulation.

In unrelated news, the country is preparing for the upcoming elections. On Saturday, the 3rd, the newspaper the Hungarian Daily pointed out that Tusk’s government hasn’t been able to get rid of the power Law and Justice exercises on the country because the members of the party are still influential in some state institutions, such as the National Council of the Judiciary, the Constitutional Tribunal, and the National Media Council. Since Andrzej Duda has connections with Law and Justice, his veto power effectively prevents the government from acting on its own will. For this reason, the Hungarian Daily points out that Tusk wants to empower his coalition’s position in the EU with the upcoming European Parliament elections and do well in the twenty twenty-five presidential election to help the government be more independent from the Law and Justice’s influence.

Speaking of the twenty twenty-five presidential elections, Mateusz Morawiecki, the former prime minister and member of the Law and Justice party, said he was ready to be a candidate for the party. People think that the new president won’t be a member of Tusk’s party, Civic Platform.

Elections are always challenging. On Monday, the 6th, students and doctors of the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest university in the country, took a break from their work to protest the upcoming university’s presidential elections. The incident sparked after Professor Zbigniew Gaciong, the current president of the university, imposed disciplinary punishment on his opponent, Professor Agnieszka Cudnoch, so that she couldn’t participate in the presidential election. This made the current president the only candidate for the next term. The media did not report the reason why he punished his opponent. After the incident, the Ministry of Health recommended that the elections not be held. However, the chairwoman of the university stated that the ministry has no right to interfere because the university is independent from the state.

On a positive note, on Saturday, the 3rd, Poland ranked forty-seventh with a score of eighty in the World Press Freedom Index twenty twenty-four, which is ten places higher compared to last year. The World Press Freedom Index evaluates press freedom in 180 countries. The director of the Polish PAP news agency said the current rank is not something to be proud of as the country was ranked nineteenth in twenty fifteen. The Freedom Index worsened during the Law and Justice government from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty-three as the party increased its influence on the media. Experts predict that press freedom will develop in the next few years under the liberal government. However, some journalists, like Bartosz Wieliński, the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, said that Donald Tusk does not seem to be paying attention to the state of public media, and his government should undertake new reforms to ensure further media freedoms.

Moving on to justice. On Wednesday, the 1st, a sixteen-year-old boy threw a Molotov cocktail at the Nożyk Synagogue, the only standing synagogue in Warsaw after World War II, as Nazi Germans destroyed all of them during the war. The police regarded the incident as an arson and anti-Semitism act and detained the boy. The Molotov cocktail only caused slight damage to the front facade. Top politicians, including the president and foreign minister, strongly condemned the incident and said there was no place for anti-Semitism in Poland. The prosecution office decided to keep the boy in child prison until a court issued a decision.

The office requested the court treat the suspect as an adult and give him ten years of prison for threatening the lives of many people and harboring hatred against religion. However, some Poles find this request very harsh and unjust, saying that he was only sixteen and that his act did not pose a direct threat to people and burned only one square meter of the synagogue wall.

And to close this edition, on Saturday, the 3rd, hunters from the Szarak hunting club and the police started searching for a person who shot a pregnant deer in Kowalewo during a close season. Hunting is not allowed between the 15th of January and the 1st of October in the country because animals are mating during this period. The Hunter Club will give 1,250 dollars to the person who reports the suspect because they think this incident damages the hunters’ reputation. The suspect will face up to three years in prison when the police find him.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks your joining us!

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