One of the standout facts in this great data-driven piece by @tomcalver.bsky.social is that the Warsaw region has higher GDP per capita, adjusted for cost of living, than any part of the UK other than central London
With growing military, economic and energy ties around the Baltic Sea, Poland's geopolitical focus is increasingly towards the north, unlike for most of its recent history, writes @danieltilles1.bsky.social.
This is precisely how the migration pact was designed to work. The criticism of it in Poland was often misleading.
Equally, however, what Tusk is not telling you now is that, once Poland is no longer deemed a country under migratory pressure, it will have to help others that are.
This is being claimed as a victory for Tusk and/or Nawrocki but in reality the European Commission said in 2023 that Poland was likely to benefit from the migration pact - rather than have to receive migrant quotas - because it has taken in so many Ukrainians:
notesfrompoland.com/2023/06/26/e...
A lovely Polish saying I've just learned: jak szczur na otwarcie kanaΕu.
Literal meaning: like a rat for the opening of a sewer.
Figurative meaning: being dressed in an ostentatious or overly formal way
Read the article and find out :)
The National Museum of Australia: "The vast majority of boomerangs are of the non-returning variety" nma.gov.au/defining-mom...
In general - as I've long complained about (notesfrompoland.com/2018/08/21/p...) - Poland has a legal system with such wide-ranging and strict "insult laws" that it constitutes a threat free speech.
Unfortunately politicians on all sides regularly take advantage of them
Gazeta Polska's cover was awful but, as a believer in free speech and media freedom, I don't think courts should be ordering newspapers to make apologies for insulting politicians.
And I don't think politicians should be suing them to do so.
Zelensky has been in Warsaw a few times before, so why was the award given now, while Trzaskowski is standing for president?
Perhaps there's a reason I'm unaware of, and I'd be happy to be enlightened 3/3
...directly on any of Poland's presidential candidates and instead giving a general answer about why supporting Ukraine's EU and NATO accession is important
It was also odd that he granted an award to Trzaskowski for Warsaw's support for refugees now, three years after the main refugee crisis 2/3
I'm a strong supporter of Ukraine, but Zelensky shouldn't have answered this question in a way that risked making such support a partisan issue in Poland, where up until now both main parties have strongly backed Kyiv.
He could easily have answered by saying he does not want to comment...1/2
The former PiS government regularly clashed with Israel (much more than Tusk has done) and waged lawfare against domestic opponents.
That didn't seem to bother Trump then, so why should it now?
Among Poland's various aims during its EU presidency, by far the hardest will be teaching Europe to speak Polish in six months
Last December, after elections that removed PiS from power, the proportion of Poles who said they were satisfied with the functioning of democracy reached its highest ever level of 55%.
Now, after a year of Tusk's government, the figure has fallen back to the norm
This is the Polish equivalent of DEFCON 2.
The nuclear option is to get Polish grandmothers to release their strategic butter reserves
It's amazing how little attention this announcement has received.
The rhetoric of "migrant weaponisation" and the idea of ignoring asylum rights - as was promoted by parties like PiS three years ago - has now gone completely mainstream
ΕwiΔczkowski: nieopublikowane orzeczenia TK sΔ
nadal waΕΌne, a premier, ktΓ³ry ich nie publikuje, Εamie prawo.
cc BeataSzydlo @pisorgpl.bsky.social
Now that you're all leaving X, KaczyΕski - who has famously had zero social media presence - has finally set up an account there
Here is the same UN office calling for more LGBT+ rights in a Muslim-majority African country www.ohchr.org/en/news/2021...
