Politics

The sequence of events in Poland might sound familiar to many of you. Hungary experienced quite a similar scenario. Clearly, Poland is not an isolated case. Political radicalisation and anti-democratic backtracking might be contagious.

President Andrzej Duda has just signed the act passed recently by both the Polish parliament (o, hail, the parliamentary majority of Law and Justice!) and the Senate (yay! another session held at 3am!) that is to alter the way in which Constitutional Tribunal operates. So now instead of 5 independent judges we\'ll have 15 (thus 13 will be necessary to make a binding decision) judges of somewhat dubious background while all claims will be scrutinized according to the chronological order in which they have been filed. Sounds sound, but is it really?

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.

On Wednesday, December 2, 2015, Svetilnik hosted a roundtable discussion on \'The Current State of Democracy in Slovenia\', the discussants being Milan Brglez, PhD the President of the National Assembly and Matej Tonin, MA, an opposition member of parliament.

On November 18 in Budapest, the Free Market Foundation together with the Uninvited Network and the Civic Platform organized a conference on education. Teachers, students, parents, recruiters and education policy experts worked together during the event to identify the issues of the education system and to formulate responses and solutions.

Slovakia’s example is emblematic of how a government trying to patch up fiscal loopholes turns to targeting incomes of the most vulnerable, using their limited means to solve societal problems. From the government’s perspective, this is often the easiest way to procure the necessary funding.

Let’s be honest. Governments remember deregulation in their talks with businesses or during election campaigns. But they do not pay nearly as much attention to deregulation as they do to expanding regulatory obligations, increasing taxes, or telling people how to behave.

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?