Why do the recent election results in Poland, the Netherlands, and Spain matter? What do they mean for Europe? And what is to be expected of the forthcoming elections in Portugal and the European elections? We are starting the new season of the Liberal Europe Podcast with a thought-provoking conversation between our two hosts, Ricardo Silvestre (Movimento Liberal Social) and Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!).

In August 2023, an article exposing financial support from public funds for the animal farming sector was published in The Guardian. These entities receive over a thousand times more funding from the government fund than plant farmers, thereby blocking alternative access to funds from the European Union. Similar situations occur in the United States, where farms receive eight hundred times more funding from the state than those cultivating only plants.

Children’s rights are a matter of the utmost importance for politics and the future of the democratic system. Unfortunately, this statement still remains merely aspirational in Poland. The discourse and practices in the political sphere do not indicate that the decision-making circles (esp. the legislative and executive branches) are aware of the connection between children’s rights and the quality of political life.

I present a brief analysis of the key factors that influenced the opposition’s victory in the parliamentary elections in October. The order of the points does not imply a hierarchy of importance. In these elections, there were no radical party like Razem, which would claim that it would not cooperate with other parties and would take votes from the main parties, while not entering the Parliament due to not crossing the 5 or 8 percent threshold.