Poland

Poland\'s benefits from access to the Single Market are five times higher than from subsidies from the EU budget. In 2019 we received net transfers of EUR 11 billion from the EU budget. But, thanks to access to the European Single Market, Poland’s GDP was 56 billion euros higher.

Polish laws on abortion are the strictest in Europe. The government refuses the right to safe abortion to people with wombs, allowing for abortion tourism and self-induced miscarriage. This wasn’t enough for religious fundamentalists in the Polish parliament.

The Polish government’s war with both Brussels and a significant part of the Polish population over the rule of law is against Poland’s national interests. On October 26, the European Parliament adopted a resolution criticizing the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s decision to ban over 95% of legal abortions in Poland.

It could be argued that the EU is now paying the price for the incomplete settlement of the rule of law dispute during the July summit, when the multi-billion euro Corona recovery package and the seven-year EU financial framework were agreed.

The crisis of the rule of law in Poland endangers the proper functioning of the international organizations Poland belongs to. That risk depends directly on the level and scope of integration and the importance of mutual commitments.

It is not the first time that November 11th – Poland’s Independence Day to commemorate the restoration of its sovereign state in 1918 after 123 years of occupation by the German, Austrian-Hungry and Russian empires - had been hijacked by far-right groups wreaking havoc in the streets.

After the PiS government declared it is going to “repolonize” media, the US and German ambassadors to Poland, respectively Georgette Mosbacher and Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven, have met to discuss the freedom of press.

On October 22, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that abortions for fetal abnormalities violate the Constitution, effectively imposing a near-total ban on abortion. Tribunal’s president Julia Przyłębska said that allowing abortions in cases of fetal abnormality legalized “eugenic practices“.

COVID-19 reached Poland a few weeks later than Western Europe, to which the Polish government responded promptly by introducing a nation-wide lockdown. Administrative restrictions to constrain the spread of the virus coupled with reactions of wary consumers led to economic disruptions.

I keep hearing news about yet another ambulance with COVID-19 patients driving around between hospitals looking for beds, the lack of a basic coordination system for allocating patients to hospitals, and I really have the impression that Poles live in some surreal, tragic reality.