FOR Communications

The passing year of the rule of law crisis in Poland was mainly dominated with the issue of the "milestones" attached to the RRP and the disagreement within the ruling coalition as to how to achieve them. On the other hand, at the European level, both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights were extremely active in Polish cases. Let us look at their activities.

According to Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS’ government is not decidedly fighting inflation, not to repeat Leszek Balcerowicz's alleged mistakes from the times of transformation: "We were making up for this shock for several years." In reality, however, reforms of Leszek Balcerowicz turned out to be a huge success, and Kaczyński himself was once a supporter of radical solutions.

Russia's criminal invasion on independent Ukraine is now in its ninth month. Invasion’s tragic consequences reached also the territory of Poland, which may turn out to be even more detrimental if PiS passes a change in the constitution. The amendment is about excluding defense spending from public debt. The ruling coalition is blind to arguments that security is not only about tanks and cannons.

The publication "Discovering Freedom 2. In Defense of Reason” is a collection of articles by liberal scholars discussing the fundamental issues of individual freedom and its impact on the development of societies. It is a continuation of the compilation of texts on freedom titled "Discovering freedom. Against the enslavement of minds” published in 2012.

The true budget deficit at the end of 2023 will amount to over 206 billion PLN. The budget debate taking place in Sejm today is based on the draft budget, which does not show the full picture of state’s expenditures and revenues. Long-term employees of the Ministry of Finance (Sławomir Dudek, Ludwik Kotecki, Hanna Majszczyk) show what the budget’s draft for 2023 should really look like.

The country’s leaders seem to use criminal law in a highly instrumental and disproportionate way, while protecting very broadly defined, selected social groups. By handing over to the public prosecutors’ hands the decision on whether and to what extent, for example, insulting the institution of the church took place, the proposed regulations may in fact lead to the silencing of any publicly expressed criticism. At the same time, critics who justify their statements with religious motivation will be able to express themselves almost freely on any topic.

When presenting the Commission with the recently implemented amendment to the Supreme Court Act, it will be difficult for the government to convince it to pay the first tranche from the Recovery Fund - especially since the Commission's management's first comments indicate that the adopted amendments are insufficient to meet the proposed milestones.

The Act on Special Measures to Prevent and Counteract Aggression against Ukraine and to Safeguard National Security [hereinafter: the Sanctions Act] signed by the President was intended as a Polish complement to EU actions and sanctions against Russian oligarchs. However, a closer analysis of the content of the Act leads to the conclusion that it may only constitute a sham, which will ricochet off other entities. The main problem is that the procedure for including new entities on the asset-freezing blacklist is extremely short and threatens to be extremely arbitrary. Also, the rules of possible international cooperation, apart from the type of sanctions applied, have not been specified. An additional issue is also the lack of a realistically effective verification procedure prior to the making an entry onto the list, which in turn is characterized by its immediate enforceability.