Poland

The Polish government has for years been something of a pariah on the liberal international stage. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, which is firmly on the political right, is at odds with the EU establishment, particularly over its judicial reforms, which critics say will threaten the key democratic principle of separation of constitutional powers. The EU accuses Poland of undermining the ‘rule of law’ and the European Commission is, as a result, withholding the billions of euros that Poland is due from the Union’s coronavirus recovery fund. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could transform all that. The war raises some almighty diplomatic, economic, security and humanitarian challenges for Poland as

There are already a hell of a lot of foreign correspondents and human-rights workers at the Ukrainian-Polish border – an immigration problem all by themselves, perhaps. Quite a few of these reporters seem to be desperately seeking ‘racism’ stories, since that is increasingly the only news which the English-speaking media seems able to process. The heart-warming scenes of Ukrainian women and children being given shelter isn’t the story. Because those refugees are white. At the border at Medyka on Thursday the Poles put out barbecued sausages, fruit juice and water for the incoming women and children. There were boxes of toys to cheer the traumatised little ones. At the train

Krakow The invasion of Ukraine is being felt across Europe. Already hundreds of thousands of displaced Ukrainians are spilling out west in an attempt to flee Russian hostility. Polish society and the conservative government have, on the whole, supported refugees from their troubled eastern neighbour. A recent poll shows that 53 per cent of Poles are in favour of taking in Ukrainian war refugees, compared to just 22 per cent against. In Germany, attitudes are more divided, with 41 per cent supporting the settlement of Ukrainian refugees compared to 38 per cent against. More than half of the supporters of the radical right nationalist Confederation party, whose detractors have long

Storm clouds looming over the EU’s ‘rule of law’ dispute turned a shade darker on Wednesday. The European Court of Justice rejected challenges from Hungary and Poland against a controversial budget mechanism linking adherence to democracy and EU funding.  In an indication of the significance of the ruling for the bloc’s future, the verdict was the first ever to be broadcast live from the court. The European Commission will now come under intense pressure to apply the rule of law mechanism and withhold long-term budget funds for Hungary and Poland, along with the pandemic recovery funds it has already refused to hand over to those states. But the escalation of the conflict

This week it emerged that a hospital in the city of Białystok in Poland refused to grant an abortion to a pregnant woman, even though her baby had no chance of survival. The abortion was requested because of the woman’s psychological state after learning about the foetus’s prospects. Although two psychiatrists confirmed she had severe depression, the hospital said this did not meet the level of risk required for an abortion under Polish law, after a ruling by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal last year made it illegal for doctors to carry out abortions unless a woman’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy is the result rape or incest.

Rather like Germany with its ill-starred ‘Drive to the East’ in the 19th and 20th centuries, one suspects the EU is quietly regretting its keenness to absorb most of the states of eastern Europe in the early 2000s. If not, events in Poland and Hungary this week may well persuade them. For a long time, national governments in the older EU states have more or less willingly subscribed to two articles of faith: the complete supremacy of EU law over their national law, including their constitutions, and the unchallengeable power of the EU Court of Justice — not only to expound EU law but also to extend and develop it,

At the border of Belarus and Poland, camps of migrants wait for a chance to cross the border into the EU. Groups attempt to break down the razor wire fences standing in their way, Some 15,000 Polish soldiers stand ready to stop them. Belarusian soldiers urge them on and offer assistance. The Belarusian state shuttles more migrants towards the border by the day, hands out wire-cutters, and prevents them from turning back. Some 30,000 migrants have attempted to cross into Poland since August. That number is swelling by the day, with Belarus now running dozens of flights every week ferrying further desperate people to Europe’s eastern border. It is customary

The EU’s conflict with Belarus is heating up. The simmering migrant crisis on the Polish border with Belarus exploded into a new level of intensity on Monday, as large groups of migrants marched through Belarus towards Poland before attempting to storm barbed wire fences and force their way into the Schengen zone. The Polish government responded to the violation of its border with military force. Twelve thousand troops are now being deployed along the border. When migrants managed to break a section of the fence near Kuznica on Monday, a rank of Polish soldiers filled the gap as a military helicopter flew low overhead in an attempt to deter the

In recent months the spectre of ‘Polexit’ has been haunting Europe. Poland and the EU have become embroiled in a dispute over the rule of law and this week the European court announced that it would be fining Poland one million euros every day until it abolished its controversial disciplinary chamber for judges, leading some to speculate that Poland could be heading towards leaving the European Union. But is Polexit really a risk? Possibly not. But one thing is clear: the crisis between Warsaw and Brussels will not build up for much longer without either a compromise or drastic consequences. Before considering the possibility of Polexit, it must first be

Until yesterday, it was possible to imagine that there would be a political solution to the standoff between the EU and Poland. Poland would reform the disciplinary chamber for its judges, and the EU would be satisfied that its principal grievance had been addressed. The Polish government had already promised to reform its disciplinary chamber, but it was unable to set a binding timetable, as it relies for its majority on United Poland (UP), a small, deeply anti-European party. Zbigniew Ziobro, the leader of UP, is also justice minister. The EU used to be quite adept at handling political impasses like this one, through diplomacy rather than full confrontation. But

The EU is notoriously bad at learning from its own mistakes, mostly because it is unable to recognise these mistakes in the first place. A notable exception is austerity. There is now a consensus that it was a disaster, which blighted Europe’s economic resilience for a generation. A mistake the EU has not recognised yet is its role in Brexit: how it negotiated with David Cameron, and how it sided with the second referendum after the election, thus helping to create the political backlash that has destroyed even the faintest hope of a rapprochement with the UK. In what may be her last European Council, Angela Merkel yesterday spoke truth

Mateusz Morawiecki insists his government does not want to take Poland out of the EU. ‘Eighty-eight per cent of Poles are in favour of EU membership and half of these are our (Law and Justice party) voters,’ the Polish Prime Minister told the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week. But Morawiecki didn’t exactly seem committed to the EU on Tuesday when he locked horns in a fiery debate with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over Poland’s challenge to the bloc’s legal order. With Morawiecki refusing to back down and von der Leyen assuring MEPs that Brussels would move against controversial Polish legal reforms, it seemed, more than