The EU has its eyes on Warsaw, the upcoming election and the future of the Polish Meetia I head.
Of Foreign Elections, which will decide its future in the European Union. Thousands gathered in Warsaw in support of a march led by former European Council President Donald Tusk.
Poland holds parliamentary elections on Sunday, and there's a lot at stake for the nation and its people, of course, but Bloomberg's Andrea Dudik and Pyotskolemowsky report the vote also promises to decide whether Poland's nationalist government will continue to
diverge further from Western Europe socially and politically. Also top of mind the EU's response to the horrific Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and whether the continent can stand together in support of Ukraine amid growing signs of war fatigue. I'm wes Kisova today on the big take. Why Europe is watching what happens in Poland? I asked Andrea, and why is not just people in Poland who should be paying attention to Sunday's election.
Poland is the largest country in the EUS East and it has played a key role in supporting Ukraine and it's fight against Russia.
Poland was the main destination for a lot of migrants from Ukraine. Just after the war started. More than a million people arrived into the country, and Poles opened their hearts and opened their houses for them. That's something that made Poland stand out right from the beginning of the conflict. Also, Poland became a destination or the main hub for all the aid that was coming from the West towards Ukraine.
Between eighty and ninety percent of all the aid coming from the West to Ukraine passes through Poland.
This government, despite its difficulties with the EU, has been very pro us Polish officials. I visited the White House. It has been a huge ally to the US, gluing both sides of the Atlantic and its response against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As you pointed out, there's some high tension between Poland and other members of the EU, and that too is really a big part of the story, beyond its relationship with Ukraine. Exactly what is the source of that tension.
The current government has been fighting on the various fronts with the EU. The main fight is over the rule of law. The current government has tried to erode checks and balances that are in the system by changing the court and stacking the top court with their own appointees. Dead did not go down well with the EU, which said this is basically a way to have an influence over the courts, over the justice system by the executive.
As well, the European Union's highest court has ruled that Poland's controversial justice reform violates EU law.
That led to the situation where Poland has been withheld money from the so called Recovery and Resilience Fund. The fight over judiciary also extend into other areas. The local governments that were run by the current coalition have set up so called LGDBQ free zones, the parts of the country where LGBTQ people are not welcome. Again, the EU reacted, They pushed back and said those areas, those regions of
the country will not receive aid. Just to give you a bit of a context of how the political system in Poland is structured. The Prime Minister is the head of the government. His name is Matosh Moravitsky, although actually the leader of the main party, the Law and Justice, which has been in power for eight years. Right now, unofficially he's just a deputy prime minister, but as a matter of fact, he is the most powerful person in Poland.
And that's yooswav Kachinsky in his party, the ruling Law and Justice Party is also the party of the Prime Minister.
We also have the President, whose role is mostly ceremonial, although as the head of the armed forces Andre Duda, his role has grown over the last year, especially since the war in Ukraine has begun. The president is also the person who decides who gets the first chance to form the government after the election. The Law and Justice Party dave pulled the country into this populist group of
countries that are now emerging in Europe. A couple of things characteristic of how they've done it is obviously they've put up a fight with the EU. They've been less tolerant for LGBTQ people, the abortion lots have been tightened. Their entire rhetoric during this election has been very much focused on us against them, you know what's important for our country, against the EU as representing the forces from coming from the outset and trying to impose their rules on Poland.
Poland now is the most divided it has been since post communist days. On the one hand, we see society voters of the Law and Justice Party who have benefited from the social benefits that the government has handed out and they're happy and they just wanted to stay that way. And on the other hand, we have the opposition of mostly young people or just followers, are trying to decide whether their rights are going to be further taken away from them. And this is where Poland stands right now.
That the sort of turning point of are we going to go further in this division or is there a chance for the opposition to win and bring Poland back to the European mainstream.
Andre are these policies popular with most people in Poland?
What the Lawn Justice did when it first took power eight years ago, it really focused on voters it felt that were left behind from this post communist transformation and that people who didn't benefit from suddenly being part of the richer block and that has really worked for them. And that is something that people that we've talked to keep saying, they're better off than they were eight years ago.
And even though they may not like all of the government's policies, or they don't agree with them, or even if they agree with them, their focus or their appreciation of sort of the improvement of their everyday life overshadows
everything else. For example, during the eight years of Law and Justice rule, wages have nearly doubled, jobless rate has fallen by a half, and the living standards have jumped to eighty percent of the EU average, which is an increase from about sixty nine percent from twenty fifteen when the party took over. Over the last few months, we've
seen the Far Right Party rise in opinion polls. It's now in the fourth place, and for example, their main slogan was that every pole deserves a grill and a holiday and a car basically, So that just kind of explains the focus of the ruling party and even some of the start up parties like the Far Right Party. On sort of the economic aspect.
We've talked about how some of this is tension between urban areas and more rural or suburban areas in the country, and that's played out in some of the policies that Law and Justice has enacted. Is that right.
Indeed, an important program that helped Lunch Justice get into power in the first place was the so called program of five hundred plus, which were benefits. They were paid out to children, and it was an enormous hit with
the population, especially worsoff And. While this was mostly derided by the people working in or living in urban areas as a way to maybe just buy vote, for some people in the rural areas it was life changing for them because suddenly they could afford to travel, they could afford to go on holiday with their children, they could afford to buy them clothes.
In this election comes mainly over social issues. When the government put in place one of the harshest abortion laws in Europe, it led to the biggest post communist protests in Poland of mainly women saying how angry they were with just how far the government was going and curbing their rights.
Thousands of women took to the streets of Polish capital of Warsaw and a dozen of other Polish cities to protest against a nine month old strict abortion law after a pregnant woman's death reignited public debate on the issue.
So we have seen some discontent, but mainly over issues such as abortions or the strong language used against LGBTQ communities and sometimes against migrants.
Andrea, You're right that another of the very big issues in this election has to do with Poland's relationship with Ukraine, which used to be very close and now seems to be fraying a bit.
We've seen it gone slightly sour of the last few months over issues such as grain shipments and relations of leaders of Poland and President Zelensky and Ukraine.
Poland has suggested that it will no longer provide weapons to Ukraine. Prime Minister Matteyosh Mortovyetsky made the comments after days of antagonistic statements between the two countries.
He told them partially this could just be because of the elections, because the ruling party has realized that some of its competitors have been decrying the amount of help that this government is giving Ukraine, and that has resonated with some voters. So they've tweaked their language slightly to be less Ukrainie and friendly. They have actually said they might cut paid for refugees who still remain in the country.
So we have seen some shift, but a lot of it could be attributed to the election campaign, and it is to be seen how after the election is over, what these relationship with Ukraine, how it will evolve.
The sort of the conflict that we're seeing right now has been in the making for the past few months, after more and more grain from Ukraine started coming into Poland because of the fact that ports in the Black Sea were blocked and Ukraine couldn't export its grain out in this direction, and once so much grain ended up on the Polish market, farmers got terribly upset. Obviously, farmers
are an important constituency for the ruling party. They are key to this party success in this election, and the government had to do something. So what they did was they imposed a ban.
Poland, Slovakia and Hungary say they're banning the import and transit of grain from Ukraine to protect their own agricultural sectors. As comes after local farmers complained of grain coming from the war torn country being sold below market price.
The ban has continued, the EU approved of it for a while, but in mid September the ban expired and at that point the government basically said we'll go ahead and continue restricting imports of Ukrainian grain into Poland. That was the point where tensions really exploded. The question is how much of this is related to the election and how much of that damage will stay on after the votes are cast.
After the break. How the ruling party uses state run media to spread its message Andrea, you right that another way that the Law and Justice Party has really been able to spread its message around the country and gain popularity is in the way it has control over some of the country's press.
Exactly, the party controls the state around television, It has its own loyal newspapers, and in these media it gets complementary coverage. No hard questions are asked, none of its decisions are questioned, and the opposition has complained that it does not have the same access to public media, which is very important thing in Poland because that's how voters in a country of thirty eight million people still consume news.
And if you are not on public television, then you don't have a way at least that's what the opposition claims to spread the message and kind of offer a different position to that of the government.
Indeed, the role of the state TV is really important this election. The opposition has repeatedly accused both the state TV and the ruling party of essentially spreading their propaganda through state TV. We've seen reports from media monitoring groups coming from the EU which said that in that sense, the opposition doesn't really get equal access to what is
state run media. And there is also the fact that the ruling party has created a certain ecosystem of newspapers and media outlets that's providing a favorable coverage for them.
Tell us about the opposition that's trying to unseat Law and.
Justice, The opposition is first of all fragmented. There are right now four parties vying for rule Poland. They failed to unite before the election. But the main opposition party that everyone is talking about the civic platform, it's the party led by former European Council President Donald Tusk. He used to be Poland's Prime minister before Law and Justice took power. The opposition main message and their electorate is obviously focused very much in the urban areas. They stand
for the EU. So the way they are trying to pitch their message to the electorate is this populist government will with their policies in the end lead Poland out of the EU, and we as the opposition, stand in favor of the EU and what we want to do after the election if we win the election we want to make sure that we have peace with the EU, that we are once again considered a party where the laws are being followed, where we can work together, and where its voice is being heard in Brussels, so that
we can work together with the EU. And this message obviously is very unlimited in its scope because it's very much focused on the urban voter who is mostly wealthy, and the opposition has been having a lot of problems by trying to expand that message beyond that core electorate.
When we come back, how the election's outcome could affect Poland's relationship with the rest of Europe. So people head to the polls this Sunday, How does the election work? What happens from here?
The ruling Land just has been ahead with the opposition Civic Platform behind, and it seems like once the polls are closed and the votes are counted, we may be in a situation where neither of the two parties have the majority and will be forced to seek a coalition partner. At this point, the Justice will have the first pick at forming the coalition, or if they have the majority in the lower house of Parliament, then they obviously have
the majority they can form the government. The situation based on the opinion post suggests that we might be in a situation where neither of the two main parties have enough votes to actually have the majority in parliament, and that might actually lead to a situation where we have weeks, if not months, of uncertainty where parties talked to one
another and trying to form coalition. In that sense, the opposition might have the upper hand because it's for parties and they've claimed they want to work together to form
the government the Law and Justice. Their only option to form a potential coalition if they're fall short of the majority is far right Confederation Party, which as a matter of fact said they don't want to be in any government and they will play an important role in deciding whether, if we don't have a majority for any of the bigger parties, which party actually stays in the government.
Afterwards, Andrea, what does the outcome of this election mean for Ukraine mean for Europe? What is it that you're watching for in the weeks ahead.
I think this election, we could say, is the most closely watched by Europe and Ukraine for the rest of
the year. It will decide whether Poland stays where it is in kind of a strange position when it is at oz with the EU but supports Ukraine on most issues, Or whether if the opposition wins the reforms the government later it will bring Poland back to the European mainstream, or whether it will remain in this unique position of being at oz with the EU and fighting with the EU but at the same time supporting the EU when it comes to helping Ukraine.
What's at stake for Ukraine is whether the path that we've seen before the election was just electioneering and an attempt by the ruling party to attract more fire right voters, or maybe a sign of things to come, Whether that's the sign of a certain fatigue within a society and Poland will really reduce its aid for Ukraine. It doesn't seem likely, given that it's in Poland's strategic interest to support Ukraine. It's probably something that Ukraine leadership will really look for.
If you look at the map of Ukraine at its western border with the EU, some of the states you have Hungary, for example, which is not as supportive of Ukraine as the EU would like. Slovakia just elected its former prime minister to office again and it's a leader who says that his country will no longer expert weapons
and provide weapons to Ukraine. And when you look at Poland, the question is just how much aid and help Ukraine can count on going forward, especially at a time when we've seen some steps in the US that are not as favorable in continuing the aid. And some of you members are even getting weary and tired of helping Ukraine in the war that may stretch for years to come.
Andrea Pot, thanks so much for giving us a view of this really important election. Thank you, thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Ergolino.
Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Frederica Romanello is our producer. Our associate producer is Zenobsidiki Rafael I'm Seeley is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin, I'm wes Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another big take. Have a great weekend.