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The negative view of Poland continues to dominate the foreign press.
Polish News Roundup 23 July 2006
Here are highlights of news coverage about Poland from news sources around the world. Each item is linked directly to the source. You are encouraged to visit the source for complete information and to leave any comments that you might have on that particular item. You may also leave comments at the bottom of this page.
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Double trouble - Brotherhood takes on new significance in the heart of Europe. Poland’s President abruptly cancelled his planned appearance at a meeting with the leaders of France and Germany last week after a German newspaper likened him to a potato. Yesterday, Poland was poised to acquire a new prime minister who lives alone with his cats and whose political allies include an admirer of Hitler’s economic policies. The two men were both child film stars. They are also identical twins. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2277669,00.html
Rural Development Programme Delayed - Following leaked information from an internal audit conducted by the Agricultural Development and Modernisation Agency (ARiMR), due to the Agency's shortcomings the EU-funded Rural Development Programme may be delayed by several months.
http://www.pnb.pl
Polish government continues the clash with Eureko - The Polish Ministry of the Treasure sent a motion to the Belgian arbitrary court CEPANI asking to exclude Mr Stephen Schwebel from the proceeding.
Mr Schwebel was the jury chosen by Eureko which filed a suit against Poland. The Dutch insurer accuses the Polish government for failing to execute the provisions of the privatization agreement and denial to sell the remaining 21 percent of PZU, Poland’s largest insurance company. Poland asked to exclude Stephen Schwebel in fall 2005 when it received information suggesting that he was not totally impartial. However, the Belgian court decided that it must be the highest instance that should make decision here. The Ministry of the Treasure suspects that he was connected with a Washington lawyer’s office fighting against Poland in another arbitrary proceedings. Both Stephen Schwebel and Dutch Eureko reject these accusations.
http://www.pulsbiznesu.pl/content.aspx?sid=6938&guid=93830283-EE0A-42FD-BB2C-EAA63CDA83FA
Poles Fear Political Twins Will Double Drift to the Right - Lech Walesa, the former president, fired the brothers from his government because he did not like their “constant conspiracy theories.” “His approach is to first destroy and then think about what to build,” Mr. Walesa said of the country’s current president, Lech Kaczynski, who served as Mr. Walesa’s national security chief.
That sums up a growing consensus that has rippled across this still fledgling democracy in the days since Mr. Kaczynski appointed his twin brother, Jaroslaw, to the post of prime minister earlier this month. Many Poles see the twins’ leadership as consolidating a shift toward right-wing, nationalist politics that has polarized the country between older, less educated rural voters who elected Mr. Kaczynski and the younger, educated urban voters who largely oppose him.
"Democracy is working,” Mr. Walesa said. “If they threaten that, they will be taught a lesson.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/world/europe/20briefs-005.html
PiS ruling party wants to win back Kedzierzyn chemical producer - The head of regional PiS demands the prosecutor’s office to check the privatization of Kedzierzyn chemical plant. It may disturb the privatization which was supposed to be conducted by PCC German company.
I’m surprised that things are going this way. They want to stop privatizations”, Jerzy Majchrzak, the former CEO of Kedzierzyn commented.
http://www.pulsbiznesu.pl/content.aspx?sid=6938&guid=E8136D8C-D104-45B3-AD88-A323028D794C
Is Kaliningrad taking its first steps towards the EU? - There is a region between Poland and Lithuania that is not part of the European Union, this region is Kaliningrad; a Russian territory with a hundred-year-old history, a difficult present and a European future
How Russian is Kaliningrad? Behind Lenin's statue, the new Orthodox church is rising (Michael Galkovsky) Kaliningrad was the capital of Eastern Prussia, having the German name of Koenigsberg. It was the birthplace of Immanuel Kant. In 1946, it became part of the Soviet Union, and the base of the Russian Baltic fleet. Since the EU accession, Kaliningrad finds itself isolated, in the middle of Poland and Lithuania.
Kaliningrad, the crisis
Kaliningrad experienced a certain feeling of abandonment after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, when it entered a phase of political, economic and social crisis, mainly due to its separation from ‘Mother Russia’.
In a region where 90% of the world’s reserve of amber can be found, agriculture was the principle activity and the average per capita income, until a few years ago, was approximately 100$ a month. The decline that has taken place over the past fifteen years is evident: an extremely high unemployment rate and one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in Europe confirm the lack of Moscow’s presence in the enclave.
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Poland's new leader sets pro-EU tone - Poland's new prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski gave an EU-friendly speech to parliament on 19 July as deputies approved his nomination to the post by 240 votes to 205, but he fenced off social issues such as gay rights as a sovereign domain.
"The key feature of our policy is membership in the European Union. We want to be in the EU and, I stress this, to take part in everything that can lead to breaking today's EU crisis. This means finding a new [legal] foundation," he said, referring to the draft EU constitution.
On the eurozone, he added the government will stick to previous plans to cap the budget deficit at zloty 30 billion this year [€7 billion] in a "continuous" politics of fiscal discipline, but warned "we will need to use the zloty, everything indicates, for many years to come."
His words run counter to his popular reputation as a sharp eurosceptic and economic anti-liberal, with the value of the zloty falling after the sudden news, two weeks ago, that Mr Kaczynski will take the reins from his more moderate and liberal predecessor, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz.
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Poland: President’s Twin Wins Confidence Vote to Become Premier - The new government led by Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the identical twin of President Lech Kaczynski, comfortably won a vote of confidence in Parliament. In a policy speech, the new prime minister said he wanted Poland, which joined the European Union in 2004, to become a “big country that counts” in Europe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/world/europe/20briefs-005.html?
Vetting court to look into Gilowska's case - Polish Press Agency informed that the vetting court will look into the case of former Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska on August 2nd.
http://www.radio.com.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=39329
Polish airports break last year's record - Within the first six months of this year Nine Polish airports served almost 7 million people, which is 33 percent more than a year ago. Thanks to the Irish no-frills airline Ryanair, even smaller airports such as Bydgoszcz, Szczecin and Lodz also increased their number of passengers.
http://www.radio.com.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=39327
Six million passengers at Polish airports - There were crowds at the Polish airports in the first half of the year. However, it may be difficult to repeat these records. The Lodz airport noted record increases and had nearly 82,000 passengers while in the same period of last year it was below 1,000. Some airports have no technical possibilities to have more passengers.
“We must change into a big construction site in upcoming years to be able to develop”, Wlodzimierz Machczynski, the CEO of the Gdansk airport admitted.
http://www.pulsbiznesu.pl/content.aspx?sid=6938&guid=794843FF-DF2F-4DEB-88D8-517640B1B1EE
Newsweek On Poland's Ruling Twins - Judging by a new book of interviews with the twins conducted by Michal Karnowski and Piotr Zaremba, reporters for NEWSWEEK's Polish edition, most of the battles they pick are less about ideas than perceived slights and settling scores. Longtime Solidarity activists during the communist era, the Kaczynskis always resented the fact that they didn't get the same kind of recognition as many of their more glamorous colleagues. After the communist regime collapsed, they served newly elected President Lech Walesa—and promptly were at the center of infighting that shattered the old Solidarity camp.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13880048/site/newsweek/
Will the Kaczynskis now boycott the next meeting with George W. Bush? - Well, I never thought it would come to this, on so many levels. Here's a little piece from the Daily Show on the Kaczynski twins. The Duck Republic, or as beatroot puts it, the Burak Republic, conquers the world. John Stewart doing a bit on Poland. Incredible. Will the Kaczynskis now boycott the next meeting with George W. Bush?
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Nobel Prize Winner Walesa Lashes Out At Poland's Twin Leaders - Polish Nobel Peace Prize winner and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa has lashed out at Poland's current twin leaders, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw, calling them incompetent and that they were not capable of governing the Central European country.
Walesa, who served as Poland's president from 1990-1995, tells German weekly Der Spiegal that the Kaczynski brothers were 'without the necessary format' and called their style of governing 'embarrassing.'
Walesa also revealed that he earlier fired both brothers from his office because 'I realized they were destroying more than actually doing something constructive.'
The Kaczynski brothers, opposition activists during the communist era, formed their own party in 2001, the Law and Justice Party.
It is reported that governments across Western Europe see the Kaczynskis as prickly, unsophisticated, provincial nationalists.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004232043
Germany in hot water after labelling Polish leader a 'potato'
- The "potato war", as the German media has dubbed the dispute, has prompted the Polish government to consider banning an internet site that publishes foreign press articles critical of the Warsaw government.
The intensity of the dispute has shocked the German government. Officials refuse to discuss the Polish complaints, but privately they have described the row as " risible" and "unworthy" of a European Union member state. They accuse President Kaczynski, and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, who was sworn in on Friday as the country's new prime minister, of having a "problem with the principles of press freedom".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/16/wspud16.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/07/16/ixnews.html
Poland's government Twin problems - From The Economist print editionPoland is suffering from a bad image. Blame the Kaczynski brothers Reuters. One of them is now prime minister
IT IS easy to argue that the Law and Justice party has done disappointingly little in the nine months since it won Poland's parliamentary and presidential elections. But in one respect it has done a lot: once a regional heavyweight, respected in America and around Europe, the country now attracts ridicule and condemnation.
The main culprit is the president, Lech Kaczynski. Chaotic organisation, poor staff and inexperience have led to a series of gaffes, rows and snubs. The latest was his withdrawal from a trilateral summit with France and Germany after a satirical article in a minor German daily. By insisting that the German government apologise, Mr Kaczynski cast doubt on his understanding of press freedom.
Another culprit is the right-wing League of Polish Families, one of two small parties in the ruling coalition. It attracts a thuggish fringe, deliberately conflates homosexuality with paedophilia, and has failed to shake off accusations of anti-Semitism.
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Polish farmers will get billions of zlotys of EU funds - The bill how to divide EU funds for the agricultural sector is ready. There are a couple of new things.
Decision will be made soon how to distribute EU funds in the years 2007-13 among the Polish farmers and food producers. A bill prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture is being shown to other ministries. The government will approve it within several weeks, and then it will be sent to the European Commission.
“The program provides for EUR 11.8 billion of EU funds plus EUR 3.5 billion of Poland’s funds. The farmers, food producers and food groups will get these funds. Big amounts of money will be spent to build jobs in the country which are not connected with agriculture”, Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski, the deputy Minister of Economy said.
http://www.pulsbiznesu.pl/content.aspx?sid=6938&guid=B473142C-CB96-4967-A39E-B57F0BA144ED
Envoy in 'potato' jibe at Poland's top twin - Poland is "mishandling" relations with Germany, Warsaw's ambassador to Berlin said on Tuesday , in a rare breach of diplomatic protocol that reflects underlying tensions within the administration of president Lech Kaczynski.
Speaking in a Financial Times interview in Berlin, ambassador Andrzej Byrt said Warsaw's reaction to a controversial satirical article in a German newspaper in which the Polish president was compared to a potato had been "too emotional".
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Poland's nationalists may prove to be awkward - Poland's new prime minister faces a difficult test this week when he visits Brussels and London on his first foreign trip since taking office following parliamentary and presidential elections. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, a 45-year-old former mathematics teacher who has not previously held a cabinet post, will seek to resolve doubts surrounding his minority administration. But there are many questions he will not be able to answer because the real power rests not with him but with the twin brothers who run his Law and Justice party.
European Union leaders will want to know how the twins – president-elect Lech Kaczynski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the party chief – intend to reconcile their sometimes Eurosceptic rhetoric with EU responsibilities. Also under scrutiny will be their plans for the Polish economy and management of the parliamentary deals they have struck with populist groups on the left and the right. Mr Marcinkiewicz's task is hard because, even in Warsaw, many are struggling to decide what a government headed by Law and Justice (known by its Polish acronym PiS) might mean or how long it might last.
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