Nowhere in the EU is smog more suffocating than in southern Poland. This year, the polluted Polish mining city Katowice will host the COP24 climate conference. Ahead of that, change is in the air — and on the ground.
Orbán tries to destroy Germany’s positive image in Central Eastern Europe, depicting Germany as the capital of the decadent, liberal, pro-immigration EU that is doomed to fail. Tolerating such a behaviour would be a huge long-term strategic mistake for Germany.
With Britain leaving the EU Poland is loosing one of its most important security policy ally. At the same time up to a million polish migrants in Britain are facing an uncertain future as they were already being used as scapegoats in the Brexit campaign.
Poland has also taken in refugees and economic migrants from Chechenya, Georgia, and Ukraine. Any solution to the refugee crisis requires EU-level efforts, including effective implementation.
At the beginning of May, large demonstrations against the policy of the government have taken place in Warsaw, Poznan and Wroclaw. The initiator of these and other former demonstrations in the last months is the movement KOD (Komitet Obrony Demokracji), the Committee for the Defense of Democracy. Veronika Felder and Michael Álvarez Kalverkamp spoke with Aleksandra Śniegocka-Goździk und Jarosław Marciniak, two KOD members, about the movement and the current situation in Poland.
When analysing the structure of party supporters and the shifts in their preferences, parliamentary elections 2015 in Poland can be seen as a reversal of several trends which have already shaped the Polish politics since 1989.
Poland is a major coal producer. Miners there are well organised and have strong political leverage. There is a big question mark over how the new government want to approach EU climate policy. An analysis.
After successfully having put its candidate in the presidential seat in May 2015, national conservative party PiS has now managed to win an absolute majority in the parliament. Not a single left-wing party has made it through the elections. It remains to be seen how the electorate will feel represented by this shift to the right in parliament.
It remains to be seen whether the majority decision on the redistribution of 120,000 refugees was a clever move. In Central Eastern Europe, the voices against the “dictate of the majority” cannot be ignored.
