If Law and Justice manages to reach an agreement with the broadcasters, I see no problem. Needless to say, it is not a big sum if we compare it with European standards. Polish public media are still going to be much poorer than those in Germany, Great Britain or France and it will still be an uneaven cultural competition.
Currently, we have completely different social stratification and the term “working class” is very obsolete. When we look at the rebellions in the times of the Polish People’s Republic, the years 1956, 1970 and 1976 are protests of the workers. But 1980 was such an immense threat because then the energy of the workers coincided with the energy of the intelligentsia.
Nowadays, caring only about national interests, sovereignty of the one and only Homeland, hostility towards other nations, all become the defining features of a “European” attitude. This is also why xenophobia comes into the light, encouraging many people of a similar mono-ethnicly or mono-ethnic mindset to do the same.
When Barack Obama landed at the airport in Havana, he not only did symbolicly end the period of cold war between the two countries, but has also very clearly shown what are the main objectives of his foreign policy. The presidential visit is the high point of the ongoing for a year US-Cuba relations which have been reinstated in December 2014.
Due to the lack of a two-third majority which would enable Law and Justice to change the Constitution officially and to implement the ideas similar to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, the governing party is often hovering on the edge of breaching the Constitution.
During the last fifty years, the United States and the EU countries have developed very high, though different, consumers protection standards. A free trade agreement based on the unification of standards will be unrealistic. Ideas of functional equivalents and/or mutual recognition of national standards is the best recipe.
Whether we like it or not, getting closer to Budapest means not only drifting away from Berlin and Brussels, but also from Washington. The political position of Poland in the world states its power in Europe. But a strong position in Europe shouldn’t be built in a way that the Law and Justice does it. In such way, you can only lose this position.
It would all be amusing, if it wasn’t really happening. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Poland acts as if he was a live advertisement of some tv program or a publishing house famous for Polish jokes. Because could there even be another, more rational explanation to that?
The sphere of entitlement and privileges of authorities and the sphere of rights and freedoms of citizens form a relationship which is characterised by inevitable and perpetual tensions. Every political system – may it be liberalism or democracy – works the same way.
