Throughout the Law and Justice party’s reign, Poland saw jurisdictional changes which triggered the European Union to turn off the money tap. With Donald Tusk in power, reforms are underway – and the EU is unfreezing funds, thus greenlighting access to billions.
France and Germany congratulate Donald Tusk on being elected as the new Polish Prime Minister. Slovenian Environment Minister Bojan Kumer reacts to the outcome of this year’s COP28 conference in Dubai. The European Parliament calls for EU-wide access to prescriptions.
Austrian Chancellor Nehammer said it was “unthinkable” to expand Schengen at the moment, but this had nothing to do with Bulgaria and Romania. During a first visit to Brussels, Polish opposition leader Tusk vowed to restore Poland-EU relations. The European Commission doubles funding for wind energy to 1.4 billion euros.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki used campaign ads for this month’s general election to condemn the European Union’s “tragic, irresponsible migration policy” but many of the images were taken out of context or had nothing to do with migration to the bloc. The videos had been viewed more than 10 million times on social media ahead of the vote on October 15, 2023 – which saw the opposition win a parliamentary majority — and showed scenes of attacks on women, unnamed burning cities or long marches of men in the desert. Although supposedly linked to the recent migrant crisis on the Italian island of Lampedusa, an AFP investigation found that the provocative footage in fact came from as far away as the United States and dated as far back as 2016. The jumble of violent scenes was mixed with genuine images of migrants on Lampedusa.
A photomontage claiming to be a recruitment poster for the Polish army has been circulating on social media in several languages, including in Polish. It says that “Poland is the shield of Europe” and uses an image of Yevgeny Prigozhin — the late leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner — to invite Poles to “protect Europe from Russia’s folly”. But AFP was able to locate the original photo, which in fact shows a bank advertisement on a tram stop in the southern Polish city of Krakow. Poland’s defence ministry, the city’s public transportation authority and the advertising company involved all denied the existence of a Prigozhin recruitment poster.