Blazej Lenkowski

Last winter, the polls of trust for Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski varied between strong 60 to 80%. Almost no one could have predicted that only four months later he will lose the elections to a young, 43 years old, unknown presidential candidate of the radically right Law and Justice party. Komorowski, supported by the Civic Platform, was defeated twice. And this means that we have entered a completely new age of Polish politics.

While creating the Energy Union, the EU should do its best to employ such mechanisms that would limit the regulatory power over the prices of sources and energy of individual states on the national level as much as possible. Such a solution applied to this specific market would – at least to some extent – secure a proper space for market principles and energy prices reflecting incomes of the citizens of a respective state.

For years, liberals have been struggling to lower and simplify Polish taxes. The results are, however, rather “moderate”, labour cost remains high, the dream of PIT flat tax – once a flagship project of the Civic Platform – is rarely even mentioned, and the recent governmental “temporarily” raised VAT rate to 23% seems to be becoming permanent. Every year, taxes and charges to the benefit of the state, not visible at first glance, are raised.

The destiny of Ukraine, which on its own has to face the military power of Russia, paints a gloomy picture. In this context, the Eastern Partnership has failed and instead of progressing Europeanisation we witness a war with unforeseen consequences.

Civic Platform and Law & Justice confirmed their domination on Polish political scene during European Parliament election on 25th of May. Donald Tusk’s party have received 32,13% and Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party 31,78% of voters support according to final result of elections.

The integration with Ukraine and Turkey is a barometer that will show whether the Old Continent will prove to be a vigorous and important player in the 21st century.

In the majority of cases, they are extremely anti-development and fulfilling these demands will only lead to the increase in the unemployment rate.

So how do we imagine the liberal vision of equal opportunities policy in Poland? For sure, it should provide the opportunities to develop regardless of external circumstances such as descent, parents’ income, place of birth, race, sex and so forth.

There is a great wave of discussion on pension reform being implemented by the government in Poland. The essential reform, forced by sad demographic factors.