FOR

In his first parliamentary speech, PM Mateusz Morawiecki repeated many theses of the government. Some of them are wrong and contradict the experiences of other countries. Others, while right, stand in clear contradiction with the actual actions of the Polish government.

It is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is to defend the Law and Justice (PiS) government against the consequences of violations of the rule of law in Poland. These violations have led eventually to the reactions set out in the EU treaties. The Polish ruling party can blame only itself.

All three Polish members of the 4Liberty.eu Network – Civil Development Forum (FOR), Liberté! Foundation, and Projekt: Polska – signed an open letter to the President of Poland Andrzej Duda with an appeal “to protect Polish Constitution and the rule of law which it guarantees”.

I am surprised that “mostly young people and families” and other people who do not support racism, xenophobia, hatred towards “the other”, nor aggressive radical nationalism, still march with people who support these ideas. They can always celebrate the Independence Day in a different way.

The Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been using state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to push for changes in the justice system that are detrimental to rule of law, economic growth, and civil liberties. At the same time, SOEs saved the Polish Mining Group (PGG) from bankruptcy.

The conference, organized by the Atlas Network and the Hungarian Free Market Foundation, attracted over 130 participants from 34 countries, including representatives of many pro-liberty NGOs. The aim of the event was not only to deepen the knowledge and skills of the participants but also to build a network of contacts.

Lowering the retirement age is contrary to the plan of Mateusz Morawiecki, Minister of Economy, which rightly linked in one of the documents the decline in working-age population with a slowdown in economic growth. It will put a drag on catching up with the Western Europe\'s living standards.

We sometimes hear that the only type of liberalism we need today is “political liberalism” while classical liberal ideas in the economy can be neglected. The view that we need only political freedom, without a broad range of economic freedoms, is not isolated and requires a response.

The Swedish think tank Timbro has presented its \"Authoritarian Populism Index\". The index “aims to shed light on whether populism poses a long-term threat to European liberal democracies” (it includes the EU countries as well as Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia, and Montenegro)

On July 26, 2017, Marek Tatala, Vice-President of the Civil Development Forum, spoke at the U.S. Helsinki Commission briefing about democracy in Central & Eastern Europe, which was organized in Washington D.C. In his speech, Tatala emphasized challenges to democracy and rule of law in Poland, including independence of judiciary.