Poland

The mass scale of the social response to what Law and Justice is doing, the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, which within two days gathered over 30,000 supporters may be just a preview of a massive political force that shall defend the rule of law, its sense of belonging to Europe and liberal democracy which it deems indispensable, or even \'holy\'.

Parliamentary sessions (both of the Sejm and the Senate) held at night. Extreme pace and we\'ve got ourselves a new act on the Constitutional Tribunal – an act to which as a pretext served, unfortunately, the previous majority appointing five and not three Constitutional Tribunal judges.

Nowoczesna is a party of the responsibility for the public finances, of the sensible management of the resources – a party that promotes entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, innovativeness and free market. It is a clear antithesis of the vision of Law and Justice – which Civic Platform clearly is not.

The goal of the project was to unfold and analyze the composition, causes and consequences of the shadow economies in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Sweden and Belarus and to draw policy recommendations for tackling the shadow economies in the respective countries.

The \"green mechanism\", which will become actually effective on 1 January 2016, should work. No sooner than next year we shall see, though, whether it will function effectively and meet the expectations of the majority of players.

About PLN 60 billion in spending and (in the beast case scenario) PLN 10 billion in extra revenue. PLN 40 billion of deficit. It seems that Poland can go broke within the forthcoming year. The question is whether Law and Justice (PiS) intends to sink the country or maybe Beata Szydło’s cabinet is designed to withdraw from the promises and fail so that Jarosław Kaczyński may step in and save the day?

A need for deregulation in Poland is recognized by the vast majority of both experts and politicians. Calls for deregulation echo in subsequent election campaigns, though to little effect. So why, despite a seemingly broad consensus, deregulation in Poland remains a problem?

Hopefully, PiS will moderate its economic programme after the election and renounce some of its harmful pre-election promises. If the new government decides to choose the “Orbánisation” path it will be harmful for Poland, the region and the EU

Despite the likely win of the PiS, the Polish election is going to open large space of uncertainty. Minority government of the Law and Justice might be the outcome. However, such government would not be able to rule the country for long and the next early elections could be expected as early as in 2016.

The information biases lead to creating a picture of Muslim migrants as homogeneous crowd of Islamists. Even if experts recognize that not all migrants are extremists, it is often emphasised that terrorists fighting in favour of the Islamic State might be among them.