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POLITICO Poland Playbook, presented by the European Gaming and Betting Association: Assassination stalks Poland — Who will lead the country? — New friends in Italy

By Ryan Heath and Michal Broniatowski

1/15/19, 3:35 PM CET

Updated 1/15/19, 4:15 PM CET
POLITICO London Playbook


https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/2019-european-election/politico-poland-playbook-presented-by-the-european-gaming-and-betting-association-assassination-stalks-poland-who-will-lead-the-country-new-friends-in-italy/?fbclid=IwAR3QElv-js17NlHmChpKYF-_8E8HTIx9ZblJ5iWBwxHfHC6oSqD7WlM5dqA

By Ryan Heath and Michal Broniatowski, in partnership with Onet.pl. Andrzej Stankiewicz, Magda Galczynska and Hanna Pawelec contributed reporting.


Welcome to POLITICO’s special edition European Elections Playbook series, zeroing in on 15 EU countries in the run up to the May 2019 poll. Here is a snapshot of Polish politics, the issues at stake and our predictions on how the political parties will fare at the ballot box.

Visit the dedicated Poland page on POLITICO’s European Elections hub, and take our quiz to see which Polish or other MEP best matches your political views. Join us again on January 22 as we take a look at Belgium, which will face both national and EU elections on the same day in May.

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POLAND’S EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

Poland’s last three decades are a story of growth: Poland averaged 4.18 percent GDP growth from 1995 until 2018 and was the only EU country not to fall into recession following the 2008 financial crisis, a period of growth matched only by Australia among OECD countries. “The scale of what’s happened in Poland over the last 29 years is difficult to grasp unless you were there at the beginning, as I was,” writes Jan Cienski.

But all is not well in the country.

The government in Warsaw is engaged in an ongoing battle with the European Commission, which is also one of its chief benefactors: Only Spain rivals Poland in the amount of funding it has leveraged from the EU’s regional subsidy system to transform infrastructure and poorer regions.

In Brussels, the ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party is being criticized for its commitment to the rule of law, the state of its free press, and for its system of patronage, which has installed party loyalists rather than experts across key executive, civil service and media functions.

Adam Glapinski, Poland’s central banker and a long-time friend and ally of Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was exposed earlier this month as paying senior aides — some of them with shaky job qualifications — over €15,000 per month. That’s 13 times the national average salary (and higher, even, than the president’s). The scandal has undercut the government’s attempts to portray itself as being on the side of ordinary Poles.

The political climate has also turned violent. Pawel Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdansk, died Monday after he was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant on-stage at a charity event. The assailant shouted that he had been wrongly imprisoned under a previous national government led by the center-right Civic Platform (Adamowicz was a member of Civic Platform before he became an independent). The killing shocked the country, and — for a time at least— stilled the normal bitter partisan debate. But there is such a deep split between those who back Law and Justice and its opponents, that there’s little chance of this temporary peace lasting very long, Jan Cienski writes.

Meanwhile, Jaroslaw Kaczynski — Poland’s de facto leader, though he is neither the prime minister nor president — is battling a serious illness and spent several months in and out of hospital last year for what he said is osteoarthritis in the knee. Two sources in Warsaw told POLITICO that Kaczynski is expected to return to hospital later this month.

WHO WILL LEAD POLAND? Should Kaczynski’s illness force him to give up the ruling party’s leadership, there are three possible successors: Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski, a long-time close confidant and former PiS secretary-general; Zbigniew Ziobro, Poland’s prosecutor-general, who has access to significant intelligence about other Law and Justice figures (and who we flagged as a man to watch in our 2018 edition of POLITICO 28); and Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s current prime minister and a Kaczynski protegé.

**A message from the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA): In Europe, different countries have different rules for regulating online gambling — but this puts players at risk by leaving them exposed to unequal and inadequate levels of consumer protection, a new study has found. While most Europeans gamble responsibly, approximately one percent display problem gambling behavior — and common, EU rules are needed to ensure a high-level of consumer protection for them all.**

WHO’S IN POLAND’S GOOD BOOKS: In a nutshell: Warsaw dislikes Brussels, fears Beijing, hates Moscow and is happy to embrace U.S. President Donald Trump.

No love lost: May’s EU election takes place amid a years-long battle between the European Commission and Poland’s right-wing government. Warsaw claims Brussels discriminates against Poland and is forcing it to accept EU-wide migration policies that go against its national interest. “Different countries, different member states are treated quite differently in very similar situations, so this is probably a definition of discrimination isn’t it?” Morawiecki told CNBC’s Geoff Cutmore last week, referring to the leeway granted to Italy and France on their national budgets. Brussels, meanwhile, says Poland is undermining the rule of law with crony structures in the judiciary and the media. The feeling in Brussels? Poland is ungrateful for the billions-of-euros-worth of EU subsidies poured into the country.

Spying arrests: Normally it’s considered bad news when it looks like a major foreign power may be spying in your country. But in this case the arrest of Huawei and Orange employees on suspicion of working with Chinese intelligence services might also be a useful foil for the Polish government to offset other homegrown problems, including the simmering central bank scandal involving top PiS officials.

Other neighbors: Poland is working quickly to wean itself off Russian gas, and imports from the United States are growing rapidly (Poland still gets two-thirds of its gas from Russia, and its Russian coal imports are increasing). As Warsaw and Brussels continue to fight, the Polish government is increasingly embracing the Trump administration, with whom it’ll co-host an Iran-focused summit in February. You can bet it wasn’t organized at the request of the EU’s chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini.
DOMESTIC BATTLES

There are two main fronts in PiS’ battle to consolidate its control over the country’s power structures: the courts and the press. Both are also considerable flashpoints in the government’s relations with the EU.

Constitutional trouble: Since 2015, the government has put Poland’s judges — including those sitting on the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary, which nominates new judges — under pressure, and attempted to remove dozens of them. Diego García- Sayán, a United Nations special rapporteur appointed to investigate the independence of judges and lawyers in Poland, wrote in June that “after having successfully ‘neutered’ the Constitutional Tribunal, the Government has undertaken a far-reaching reform of the judicial system.”

The European Court of Justice isn’t buying the Polish government’s approach, and recently required Poland to reinstate judges forcibly retired from the Supreme Court. Those judges have returned to the court, but may find themselves subject to a newly created disciplinary chamber. Meanwhile, disciplinary proceedings have begun against some judges in lower courts. In one example, the chamber accused two judges of inappropriate behavior for participating in efforts to teach youths about the Polish constitution at a rock festival.

Critical voices: Since gaining power in 2015, the ruling party has also attempted to “polonize” the media landscape by gaining control of powerful independent outlets, some of which are foreign-owned (including Onet.pl, which is co-owned by Axel Springer and Swiss Ringier). Many outside observers see the government’s efforts as an attempt to silence critical media voices.

Local media reported that the state-controlled Bank Pekao offered a loan of around €50 million to pro-government Fratria Group to buy Radio Zet (which is on sale from Czech Media Invest). Fratria owns the staunchly pro-government weekly Sieci and several news portals, but the loan would be more than six times Fratria’s annual turnover. State-controlled Alior Bank in December rejected an offer from newspaper publishers to take over failing press distributor Ruch. Instead, Poland’s largest — and state-controlled — oil company Orlen will take over Ruch in collaboration with Poczta Polska, the state postal service.

In November, U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher felt obliged to intervene in defense of a TVN24 journalist charged with fomenting fascism for filming a documentary that showed Nazi sympathizers celebrating Hitler’s birthday. News channel TVN24, which aired the documentary, is owned by U.S.-based Discovery Channel. “I am writing to express my deep concern over recent allegations made by members of the Polish government against journalists and the management of TVN and Discovery,” Mosbacher wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Morawiecki.
AN EARLY NATIONAL ELECTION?

After failing to win city votes in local elections in October, Law and Justice is worried that liberal urban voters could mobilize and dent the party’s national support again in May’s European election. Any sign of dropping support for the ruling party would also be bad news ahead of national parliamentary elections in October. So when the government canceled a budget debate in the lower house before Christmas, media and politicians started talking about the possibility of early elections, possibly in late March.

A date to watch: If the budget bill has not passed both chambers of parliament and landed on the president’s desk by January 27, Polish President Andrzej Duda will have the right to dissolve parliament and call early elections. The Sejm’s budget debate is slated to take place January 24-25.

Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, the Sejm’s deputy speaker and a member of opposition party Civic Platform, told POLITICO: “There is definitely talk at PiS about an early vote, before [European] elections, because they fear that a high turnout in cities would harm their result the same as it happened in local elections. But now that they have [scheduled] the budget vote ahead of the deadline it will probably not happen.”

Is the opposition ready for early elections? “Of course, we are prepared. But with PiS constantly standing at around 40 percent support, the only way to defeat them is to build a vast opposition bloc,” said Kidawa-Blonska. “We managed to create the Civic Coalition with the Modern Party for local elections and it worked. And now we are talking about extending this coalition. I am convinced it will materialize because it is very rational.” Civic Platform is also talking to the Polish People’s Party (which is also part of the European People’s Party in Brussels) about joining a united bloc.

New hope for the Polish left: The left side of Polish politics has been left largely uninhabited since 2015, when the former ruling Alliance of Democratic Left (SLD) failed to reach the threshold for parliamentary representation leaving the Sejm without a left-wing group. Now, it seems, someone may be stepping in to fill that gap: Robert Biedron, Poland’s first openly gay high-profile politician, has announced he is creating a left-wing movement with progressive social slogans and critical of mainstream parties.

The hope? That it will allow the left to mobilize voters ahead of both the May Europe-wide election and October’s parliamentary vote. It’s still early days — Biedron’s movement, which doesn’t have a name yet, won’t announce its formal program until early February. But it has already reached 9 percent support among Poles, according to a survey published by tabloid Super Express over the weekend (in which PiS got 37 percent and Civic Platform polled at 25 percent). Biedron is now being criticized by the opposition for refusing to join the Civic Coalition, a platform set up to counter the ruling party in the upcoming elections.
THE EU ELECTION ANGLE TO WATCH

Matteo Salvini — in Warsaw last week for talks with Law and Justice chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski — pledged to create an “Italo-Polish axis” and predicted Poland and Italy would be “the heroes of this new European spring, this revival of real European values, where there will be less finances, less bureaucracy, more work and more family, and above all more security.” The Poles were more restrained in their pronouncements, insisting they had not yet agreed to anything and indicating more meetings would take place.

What’s at stake: Nothing less than the leadership of Europe’s burgeoning Euroskeptic and nationalist movements. Together these right-wing forces would command at least 160, and perhaps as many as 200 seats, in the next European Parliament. That depends, however, on dozens of parties — which currently align with four separate European party groups — agreeing to come together under just one or two umbrella groups. Salvini wants to be at the head of such a group, while Law and Justice is already poised to be the de facto leader of one: the European Conservatives and Reformists, until now run by the U.K. Conservative Party, whose MEPs will leave the hemicycle as a result of Brexit.

Under the radar: Italy’s anti-establishment 5Star Movement — the other half of the country’s ruling coalition — wants to develop its own alliance with Poland’s nationalists. A 5Star official told POLITICO the party intends to announce an alliance with Kukiz’15 (Poland), Zivi zig (Croatia) and Liike Nyt (Finland) in February. The parties are also planning a big event (to be held either in Rome or in Brussels) but will not put forward a Spitzenkandidat, or lead candidate, for European Commission president. The group hasn’t yet settled on a name, but is mulling calling itself the Alliance for Direct Democracy.
POLITICO EU ELECTION PREDICTIONS

Here’s a taste of what we think is in store. Take a look at our full predictions here.

LAW AND JUSTICE TO FINISH FIRST, BUT FUTURE STILL UNCERTAIN: Whatever happens on election day in May, the ruling party will be sending additional MEPs to Brussels and Strasbourg. The party won 19 seats in 2014, the same number as the center-right Civic Platform. Based on current polls, Law and Justice — with 42 percent support — is set to win 24 seats to Civic Platform’s 18.

WHAT ABOUT SMALL AND NEW PARTIES? Several smaller parties — including Together, Liberty and the ALDE-affiliated Modern Party — are likely to fail to meet a 5 percent electoral threshold. Parties that fail to win 5 percent of the vote are eliminated from the vote count.

Three lesser-known parties are expected to make the cut: Pawel Kukiz’s right-wing movement, Kukiz 15, is on course for either three or four seats, and potentially as much as 7 percent of the vote. The socialist-aligned Democratic Left Alliance and the rural Polish People’s Party, another EPP-aligned party (along with Civic Platform), are expected to each win three seats and 6 percent of the vote. Still, both are in the electoral threshold danger zone. A small misstep by either one could see them sending no one to the European Parliament, with those six seats redistributed among the bigger parties.

The Biedron question: We calculate that if Robert Biedron’s movement were to register as a political party and maintain its current level of support from Poles (nine percent) it could win five seats in the European Parliament election, making it the third biggest Polish party. Biedron could take a couple of seats from each Civic Platform (who could go down to 15 seats) and Law and Justice (down to 22 seats).

THE BIG UNKNOWN: These polling figures mask a big question mark in these elections: turnout. In 2014, fewer than one in four Polish adults voted in the European election. That means that Law and Justice’s lead in the polls gives them a margin of around 770,000 voters, while an untapped pool of more than 23 million voters sits on the sidelines. If even a fraction of those 23 million abstainers are mobilized, the results could differ significantly from projections based on current opinion polls.

When Poles voted in local elections in October, for example, Law and Justice won by a margin of 34 to 28 percent over Civic Platform in the country’s regional assemblies. In the local vote, Law and Justice failed to win a single mayoral post in 16 regional center cities. If that result were to be repeated in the EU election, Law and Justice would win 18 seats to Civic Platform’s 14. (A word of caution, though: Local turnout and results are not necessarily a good indicator of results in European elections.)

MILLIONS OF ‘WASTED VOTES’: The threat of wasted votes is real. In Poland’s most recent parliamentary election in 2015, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) decided to run as a coalition. That raised the threshold they had to clear for election from 5 percent (for a single party) to 8 percent (for a group of parties running together). They ended up scoring 7.5 percent, won no seats, and the 1.15 million votes they received effectively did not count. Overall in 2015, around 2.4 million votes (16 percent of all those cast) did not result in representation. The result: Law and Justice ended up with a majority of seats in the Sejm, though they won only 38 percent of the vote.

Fast forward to 2019: Both the Modern Party and Polish People’s Party are hovering at around 5 percent support. To be certain to clear the threshold, smaller parties would need to consider a coalition arrangement with a much larger party. That leaves only Law and Justice or Civic Platform as the only sure-bet coalition partners.

POLAND’S DIASPORA: Poland has more than 4 million citizens living abroad including large concentrations in Paris, London and Vilnius. Why does that matter? Fewer than 8 million Poles voted in the 2014 European Parliament election. A large turnout among Poles abroad has the potential to affect the outcome of several seats, especially the results of smaller parties struggling to reach the electoral threshold. In 2014 Civic Platform and Law and Justice scored close to 30 percent each among overseas voters.

**A message from the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA): The digital, internet world we live in requires regulations which protect consumers when they buy products online — and gambling is no different. Gambling regulation must reflect the digital world we live in, but the current licensing rules for online gambling in Poland restrict international companies from entering the market, stifling consumer choice. As a result, only 48 percent of sports bets were placed with gambling companies licensed in Poland in 2018 — meaning most Poles played on international websites not regulated or taxed by the Polish authorities. For Poland’s gambling regulation to be a success, it must ensure that Poles have greater consumer choice while keeping the consumer protection and other safeguards for players. This can be achieved by amending the license regime to remove barriers to entry, attract more companies and accommodate for greater consumer choice. This will ensure more Poles play within a safe, regulated environment and at the same time also improve state tax revenues.**