FOR Communications

The possibility for citizens to enter the session of the Sejm and observe the session is an explicit result of the provisions of the Constitution; in May 2018, however, some people were refused access to the gallery, which allowed this decision to be verified by the administrative courts.

In its economic policy the Law and Justice party announced a repetition of its actions from 2007. At that time, at the peak of the world economic boom, the Law and Justice party government passed laws that came into force during the slowdown in 2008 and 2009, increasing the public finance sector deficit by 2% of GDP and forcing the PO-PSL government to look for savings. The current announcements were also communicated at the  peak of the world economic boom, but will only fully enter into force in the coming years, when economic growth will be slower according to the available forecasts and, as a consequence, the situation of public finances will be more difficult.

The Timbro Swedish think-tank presented the subsequent edition of the Authoritarian Populism Index. The aim of the index is, among others, to determine to what extent populist parties can pose a real threat to liberal democracy in the European Union and five other countries on our continent.

On 19 December of the previous year, the President of the Energy Regulatory Office opened an investigation into the dramatic increase in energy prices. The question remains to what extent this increase is due to the progressive monopolisation of the sector by state-owned companies.

In November 2018, the Sejm received a deputies' bill amending the act on limiting trade on Sundays and public holidays and some other day. Within a few days, the first reading was carried out, the draft was discussed by the Sejm Social and Family Policy Commission which introduced minor amendments.

At the end of November, the Polish Parliament adopted another, seventh amendment to the Act on the Supreme Court, which "reinstates" the judges of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.

On the eve of World War I in 1913, at the end of the Second Polish Republic in 1938, and at the end of the Polish People's Republic in 1988, the standard of living in Poland was about 20% of that in the USA. Due to the development during the Third Republic, it stands at around 50% now.

The upgraded rating of Poland by Standard & Poor's led to many different interpretations, some of them erroneous or exaggerated. Many observers perceived it as an improvement in the assessment of Poland's long-term economic prospects, while in fact it is only a reversal of the cut from January 2016, the beginning of the Law and Justice government. Poland’s rating was already on the current level earlier, in 2007-2015, even though these were the years of the global financial crisis and the solvency crisis in the euro area. 

When the public opinion focuses on yet another strike of employees of LOT Polish Airlines, few commentators analyze the state funded transformations of the carrier. On 10 October, LOT became officially part of the state-owned Polska Grupa Lotnicza (PGL, Polish Aviation Group), a holding to which assets of three other aviation companies were also transferred (LOT Aircraft Maintenance Services, LS Airport Services, and LS Technics).

Three weeks before November 12, some MPs from PiS (The Law and Order Party) submitted a draft bill to make this day a public holiday. Late in the evening on the next day, 23 October, the project was adopted.