Monthly Archives: October 2019

Brexit: EU prepares to grant UK three-month extension

Exclusive: UK may leave earlier if deal is ratified, leaked draft shows, as France drops objections

The EU is preparing to sign off on a Brexit extension to 31 January 2020 with an option for the UK to leave earlier if a deal is ratified, according to a leaked draft of the agreement seen by the Guardian.

After earlier objections raised by the French government, a paper to be agreed on Monday circulated among member states suggests the EU will accede to the UK’s request for a further delay.

The UK would be able to leave on the first day of the month after a deal is ratified, according to the paper.

A source close to Emmanuel Macron said an agreement between the EU27 on the new Brexit extension would “very probably” be announced on Monday morning following political discussions with London over the weekend, notably a conversation between the French president and Boris Johnson.

The draft paper suggests a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is off the table as demanded by opposition party leaders as a prerequisite for a general election.

Until there is official signoff on the agreement, there remains the possibility that the terms could change, but it is the first time firm dates have been written into an official document.

“The period provided for in article 50 (3) TEU as extended by the European council decision (EU) 2019/584 is hereby further extended until 31 January 2020,” the draft agreement says.

“In the event that the parties to that agreement complete their respective ratification procedures and notify the depositary of the completion of these procedures in November 2019, in December 2019 or in January 2020, the withdrawal agreement will enter into into force respectively on [the first of the month of the relevant month].”

The potential date of 15 November for the UK to leave the EU – an idea raised by France – is not included in the draft paper.

An EU declaration attached to the draft agreement stipulates that the bloc will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. It is also says the UK has “an obligation” to nominate a candidate to join the European commission. The prime minister has previously said he will not put forward a nominee.

The European council president, Donald Tusk, has been in intensive discussions with EU leaders over the weekend. Ambassadors for the EU27 are meeting on Monday morning.

Tusk had said he wanted to avoid calling leaders to a summit in Brussels to discuss the issue and would seek to find unanimous agreement to allow sign-off via a “written procedure”.

The circulation of the draft agreement suggested Tusk had been successful in convincing France, in particular, that a three-month extension avoids the EU being dragged into the domestic row in the UK.

Among weekend developments that had persuaded Paris to drop its objections to a new delay lasting up to three months was “the significantly more likely prospect of fresh elections, now backed by several parties including the Liberal Democrats and the SNP”, the French official said.

The conditions attached to the extension had also been “further specified and reinforced” on Saturday and Sunday, the source added, in particular the “non-renegotiability” of the deal and the fact that the 27 will be able to work on the bloc’s future plans without the UK.

While wishing to preserve the unity of the 27 that had been their guiding principle throughout the negotiations, the source said, Paris had “insisted on these conditions as necessary”.

The terms in the draft agreement are in line with those stipulated under the Benn act that forced Boris Johnson to make a request to the EU for a further delay.

The extension had been due to be signed off on Friday. But the French ambassador had stood alone at a meeting of EU diplomats in arguing it was not the right time.

It was suggested by France’s ambassador that only after the vote on Monday should the EU decide to “go short, to push for ratification, or long to accommodate a general election”. Only France insisted the EU wait on agreeing to an extension.

Since then, Johnson told the cabinet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had informed him he was too isolated to insist on a shorter extension.

Developments over the weekend, in which the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party agreed to table a one-line bill in which they would back a general election on 9 December, have convinced many EU officials the UK will soon go to the polls.

Downing Street has let it be known that if Labour does not support its plan for an short extra period of scrutiny of the withdrawal agreement bill up to 6 November, and then a general election on 12 December, it will look at the joint proposal.

(28. 10. 2019 via theguardian.com)

letöltés

ISIS leader al-Baghdadi ‘died like a dog’ says Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that the reclusive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed overnight in an operation by American forces in Syria.

“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” he said. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward, he was whimpering, screaming and crying.”

Trump released details about the two-hour raid on the compound in northern Syria, during which U.S. forces chased the ISIS leader into a tunnel where he detonated a suicide vest.

The president said that Baghdadi took three children with him into the tunnel and that all three were killed. Another 11 children were rescued from the compound, he said.

“The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years. Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration,” he said.

Trump said that no American personnel were hurt during the operation but that a “large number” of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him.

He said that the tunnel collapsed on Baghdadi but that tests on his body confirmed that it was the ISIS leader.

In a press conference that lasted almost an hour, Trump commented on the raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 2011 calling the Baghdadi operation bigger.

Many observers on social media pointed out that the photo released by the White House depicting Trump watching the operation appeared to call back to an iconic photo taken during the Bin Laden operation

A reclusive leader
Baghdadi rose from obscurity to become the leader of Islamic State – then called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He has been reported killed five years since he declared the foundation of a ‘Caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria from the pulpit of Mosul’s Grand Mosque.

In April 2019, the reclusive leader served to quash rumours of his death in a video that showed him sitting on a cushion with an assault rifle, and calling for the continuation of jihad. It came after ISIS had been all but defeated in Syria and Iraq in a U.S. backed campaign.

Baghdadi was long thought to be hiding somewhere along the Iraq-Syria border. His self-declared “caliphate” will be remembered for atrocities against religious minorities and attacks on five continents in the name of a fanatical interpretation of Islam that horrified mainstream Muslims.

From caliph to fugitive
At the height of its power, the Islamic State ruled over millions of people in territory running from northern Syria through towns and villages along the Tigris and Euphrates valleys to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

But the fall in 2017 of Mosul and Raqqa, its strongholds in Iraq and Syria respectively, stripped Baghdadi, an Iraqi, of the trappings of a caliph and turned him into a fugitive.

U.S. airstrikes killed most of his top lieutenants, and before Islamic State published a video message of Baghdadi in April there had been conflicting reports over whether he was alive.

Despite losing its last significant territory, Islamic State is believed to have sleeper cells around the world, and some fighters operate from the shadows in Syria’s desert and Iraq’s cities.

(28. 10. 2019 via euronews.com)

106206020-1572187853716gettyimages-1178436757

Orbán: Turkey Releasing Migrants to Syria in Hungary’s Interest

It is in Hungary’s interest that Turkey releases migrants towards Syria rather than in the direction of Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio on Friday.

Turkey hosts some three million migrants, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to “let them out” if Europe fails to take over some of the financial burden, Orbán said in an interview to Kossuth Radio.

Migrants can break out towards Europe or Syria, their homeland, Orbán said. The latter needs to be stabilised for them to go back, he added. “That is what seems to have happened there”, he said, adding that Turkey had set up a safe zone in northern Syria recently.

If Turkey “opens the gates to Europe”, hundreds of thousands of migrants will flood into Greece, the Balkans and eventually all the way to the Croatian or Hungarian border, he said.

“It is in Hungary’s basic interest that this does not happen,” Orbán said. “One Röszke was enough,” he added, referring to a clash between border guards and migrants camped on the Serbian side of the Röszke border crossing in 2015.

Regarding Turkey’s offensive on Syrian soil, Orbán said the US and Turkey had “made an agreement”, and so “we have no further foreign policy task here … other than agreeing with the two largest military powers of NATO.”

Regarding the October 13 local elections, Orbán said he “regretted” that voters had chosen opposition mayors in many localities. On the other hand, the 52-53 percent support of ruling party candidates gives the government “renewed empowerment” to carry on with their work, so they are not going to change course, he said.

Regarding Budapest, Orbán said that since the fall of communism, the city had gone through two phases. In the first, under the liberal mayor, Gábor Demszky, the city was “filthy, reeking and its development stalled”. It was “unworthy of being the country’s capital,” Orbán said, adding that the government had been forced to bail out Budapest from 200 billion forints (EUR 607.8m) of debt.

“I don’t understand how honouring Gábor Demszky can even be considered,” Orbán said, referring to Mayor Gergely Karácsony’s plan to award honorary citizenships to the former mayors, Demszky and István Tarlós. “Would that be for the insolvency or for ruining the city? And humiliating [Fidesz-backed former mayor] István Tarlós by making him take the honour alongside him is pure insolence,” Orbán said.

Orbán said Tarlós had saved Budapest from insolvency and “got the city in order”, so that Budapest was now one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way and the Demszky era doesn’t return,” Orbán said.

Commenting on investment projects in the capital, he said the standpoint of the municipal council was putting the fate of three stadiums in question including the Bozsik Stadium, a UEFA category 4 stadium under construction in the 14th district; an athletics stadium purposed to host the 2023 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships; and a stadium for the European Men’s Handball Championship which will be hosted by Hungary and Slovakia in 2022. Referring to the Liget project, a museums quarter planned by the state in the capital’s City Park, he said for cultural investment projects it is also necessary to wait for the decision of the municipal council.

Orbán said he would maintain the position that any development project the city’s leadership disagrees with should not be carried out.

The prime minister said he wouldn’t like to “tear down” any projects in the capital, but acknowledged that a decision by city leaders could mean that some state-funded investments “will not materialise in Budapest”.

“If the new city leadership does not want Budapest to be among the sporting capitals of the world, a clear decision has to be taken and the government will adapt to this situation,” Orbán said.

Commenting on Hungary’s economy protection action plan, he said that since “the European economy does not look good”, Hungary must make decisions guaranteeing that economic growth stays at 2 percent above the European Union average.

One of the important proposal packages has already been approved by the government, he said. This applies to the modernisation of the vocational training system in order to ensure that increasingly well-prepared young people get into the workforce, he added.

Commenting on Brexit, he said the agreement between London and the EU would protect the interests of Hungarians in the UK. The British government has already approved the basic principles of the agreement, he said, adding that Brexit was now only a technical issue because “the Brits are essentially out of the EU”.

(25. 10. 2019 via hungarytoday.hu)

Donald Tusk nominated for EPP leadership

The outgoing Council president had said earlier that he ‘can’t exclude’ a bid for the EPP presidency.

Outgoing European Council President Donald Tusk has been nominated by his Polish party for the presidency of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).

The leader of Tusk’s party, Civic Platform, told Polish television TVN24 on Friday evening that he had signed off on the nomination.

“Donald Tusk is a leading politician of the European Christian Democrats. Everyone in Europe was encouraging him to run to become EPP president, including the current EPP leader, Joseph Daul,” said Civic Platform leader Grzegorz Schetyna.

He added: “Tusk agreed and I, as the leader of his home party, signed his nomination.”

Earlier this week, Tusk said that he had been approached about a potential leadership bid for the EPP, Europe’s dominant center-right political family.

“Many leaders of the parties that make up for EPP encouraged me to run for the presidency… It’ll be decided in November,” he told TVN24.

The EPP will elect a new president at its party congress in the Croatian capital Zagreb on 21-22 November.

His nomination comes amid rumours that Tusk could run in next year’s Polish presidential election. But he never confirmed his intention to run. Recent polls also suggest that he would face an uphill battle beating the incumbent Andrzej Duda.

But Tusk also told TVN24 that “potential leadership of EPP will not stop me from full engagement in Polish issues.”

(21. 10. 2019 via politico.eu)

donald-tusk-060219-m

Remain MPs hold off on forcing vote on second EU referendum

People’s Vote backers unsure of sufficient support, with Jeremy Corbyn not enthusiastic

Pro-remain MPs are pulling back from plans to force a vote on attaching a second referendum to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal on Saturday owing to fears that they do not have enough support.

Leading supporters of a “people’s vote” had been planning to use so-called “Super Saturday” to test support for a second referendum. But sources close to the campaign said there was not enough backing among former Tories for the move to be successful. They denied that their pulling away from a vote was because the Labour leadership were lukewarm on the idea.

As recently as Wednesday night, Jenny Chapman, a shadow Brexit minister, had said she was sure there would be a second referendum amendment and that Labour would support it, but Jeremy Corbyn has been less enthusiastic.

Pro-remain MPs insisted it was a better idea to hold the vote at a later stage of the process, as soft Brexit Tories will be more likely to support a second referendum in the event that Johnson’s deal fails.

In this scenario, the opposition could seize control of the order paper via an SO24 debate and hold a vote on a second referendum. If the deal does pass, they could seek to amend the withdrawal agreement bill before exit day.

However, the lack of movement on Saturday is likely to disappoint many grassroots campaigners for a second referendum. Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to turn out in Parliament Square on Saturday.

Expectations had been rising that Labour would work together with other opposition parties to try to secure a referendum. Chapman told the BBC’s Andrew Neil on Wednesday evening: “Should a deal be tabled on Saturday, I’m as sure as you can be that there will be an amendment tabled that would want to see a referendum attached to the deal. I would expect us to support that.”

However, when Corbyn was asked on Thursday whether Labour would support such a bid, he suggested his first priority was to vote down Johnson’s deal. “We are unhappy with this deal and as it stands we will vote against it, although obviously we will need to see all of the last details of it,” he said.

On the deal more broadly, he told Sky News: “From what we’ve read of this deal, it doesn’t meet our demands or expectations, it creates a border down the Irish Sea, and it leads once again to a race to the bottom in rights and protections for British citizens and a danger of the sell-off of our national assets to American companies.”

Asked whether he had given up on his plan to negotiate a Labour Brexit deal, he replied: “Not at all. A Labour government elected in a general election would within three months negotiate an agreement with the EU around the five pillars … and then within six months we would put that to a referendum.”

Corbyn expressed caution last weekend about the idea that Labour could support any Johnson deal in exchange for a referendum.

The original plan advanced by proponents of a “confirmatory vote”, including the Labour MP Peter Kyle, was that MPs would pass an amendment making the Brexit deal conditional on a referendum, and then once it was amended they would vote with the government for the deal.

But a number of Labour MPs have concerns about anything that would appear to be offering support to Johnson, albeit conditionally. And a potentially larger group have concerns about supporting a referendum at all. When Labour recommended that its MPs back the idea of a referendum in the so-called “indicative votes” process earlier this year, 27 rebelled to vote against it. Several more abstained.

If Johnson’s deal fails and he is forced to request an extension, it is possible he could move to call an election as soon as Monday. Labour would find this hard to resist as Corbyn has repeatedly said he is ready to vote for one as soon as the prospect of a no-deal Brexit is off the table.

The SNP tabled an amendment to Johnson’s deal motion on Thursday calling for a three-month extension to article 50 in order to hold a general election, indicating that the party would also support one.

The Liberal Democrats have been in favour of a second referendum before any election. However, the party will not be tabling an amendment attaching one to Johnson’s deal, even though their leader, Jo Swinson, said: “The fight to stop Brexit is far from over. When this deal comes to parliament we will use every possible opportunity to give the public a people’s vote on the Brexit deal that includes the option to remain in the European Union.”

(17. 10. 2019 via theguardian.com)

Orban says would have to ‘use force’ if Turkey ‘opens gates’ to refugees

Hungary would “use force” at its southern border with Serbia to protect the European Union’s frontier if Turkey follows through on its threat to open the gates to Europe to refugees, Hungary’s Viktor Orban said.

The Hungarian prime minister put up a fence on the country’s border with Serbia to block the Balkan route of migration, where hundreds of thousands of people marched through from the Middle East to western Europe at the peak of the crisis in 2015.

The EU is dependent on Turkey to lessen the arrival of refugees into Europe after a 2016 agreement to seal off the Aegean route was signed.

Turkey — who currently hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees — threatened to “open the gates” to allow those already in the country to continue their way to Europe if the EU acted against the NATO ally for its incursion into northeast Syria.

“The next weeks will decide what Turkey does with these people,” Orban told private broadcaster HirTV in an interview late on Wednesday. “It can steer them in two directions: take them back to Syria or set them off towards Europe.

“If Turkey chooses the latter, these people will arrive at Hungary’s southern border in huge masses,” Orban said, adding that the EU should provide more funds to Turkey to help rebuild Syrian towns.

“If Turkey sets off further hundreds of thousands on top of this, then we will need to use force to protect the Hungarian border and the Serbian-Hungarian frontier and I do not wish for anyone that we should need to resort to that,” he said.

Orban has forged close relations with Turkey as part of an eastern opening initiative.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is due to come to Budapest for a visit early next month.

Also on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had urged Turkey several times to end its military operation in northern Syria.

“In recent days I have strongly urged Turkey … to end its military operation against the Kurdish military and I’m stressing that again now,” Merkel told Germany’s lower house of parliament.

“It’s a humanitarian drama with huge geopolitical effects so Germany will not deliver any weapons to Turkey under the current conditions,” she added.

Since launching the offensive on October 9, Turkish forces have bombarded northern cities controlled by the Kurds since they defeated so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria, with US backing.

US Vice President Mike Pence is in Ankara to try and convince Turkey to halt the offensive against Kurdish fighters.

(17. 10. 2019 via euronews.com)

Avoiding ‘chaotic, no-deal’ Brexit is ‘top priority’: Polish PM

The Polish prime minister has welcomed a decision by UK lawmakers to defer a critical Brexit vote, saying that avoiding a “chaotic, no-deal” divorce should be a “top priority.”

Britain’s Parliament on Saturday approved a measure to delay a definitive vote on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal with the European Union.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a Twitter post that his country welcomed the House of Commons vote “not as a rejection of the Withdrawal Agreement but as postponement of its acceptance.”

He added that Poland would “support a positive approach” within the EU to Johnson’s proposal.

Morawiecki also said in his post that avoiding a “chaotic, no-deal Brexit should be our top priority.”

Britain’s Johnson struck an exit agreement with the EU on Thursday, just ahead of a summit of European leaders in Brussels.

He then aimed to put the agreement to a vote at an extraordinary session of the British parliament on Saturday.

But, in a major blow to the British prime minister, lawmakers in the House of Commons on Saturday voted 322-306 to postpone a decision on whether to back his Brexit deal.

The measure adopted by British MPs aims to ensure their country will not crash out of the EU without a divorce deal on the scheduled departure date at the end of this month.

The BBC quoted Johnson as saying that he would press on “undaunted” with his Brexit strategy despite losing a vital vote in the House of Commons.

He vowed to introduce legislation needed to implement his agreement in Parliament next week, the British broadcaster reported.

But Johnson was forced to ask the EU for an extension beyond October 31 after MPs backed a motion designed to rule out a no-deal exit.

EU leaders in April agreed to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc until October 31.

Poland’s Morawiecki said at the time that the extension averted the prospect of a “chaotic hard Brexit.”

Poles concerned over Brexit impact

The impact of Britain’s shock 2016 decision to withdraw from the bloc has been closely watched in Warsaw as there are around 1 million Poles living in the UK, constituting that country’s largest minority community.

Poland’s Morawiecki said on Thursday that the Brexit deal struck by Johnson with Brussels would secure the rights of Poles living in Britain.

Morawiecki said earlier this year that a no-deal Brexit would be “a bad solution” for both Britain and the European Union.

In his first speech as prime minister, Britain’s Johnson in July promised EU nationals in his country “absolute certainty” that they can “live and remain” in the UK after Brexit.

He also said at the time that “Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people” and that this decision must now be respected.

Britain’s previous Prime Minister Theresa May in December told Poles living in her country that they were welcome and would be able to stay in the UK after Brexit.

Meanwhile, over 60 percent of Poles surveyed domestically at the end of last year said that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union would have a negative impact on their country.

(20. 10. 2019 via thenews.pl)

Blow for Hungary PM Orbán as opposition wins Budapest mayoral race

Gergely Karácsony’s victory is one of many defeats across Hungary for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party

Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán has suffered his first electoral blow since coming to power in 2010, with an opposition candidate scoring a shock win in the Budapest mayoral race.

The victory was “historic”, said the pro-European centre-left challenger Gergely Karácsony, 44, who was backed by a wide range of opposition parties from across the political spectrum.

The mild-mannered former political scientist led by 51% of the vote ahead of the incumbent Istvan Tarlos on around 44%, with 82% of votes counted.

In office since 2010, the 71-year-old Tarlos, who is backed by Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party, congratulated the new mayor by phone, Karácsony told cheering supporters.
Hungarian minister grilled by EU about ‘threats to rule of law’
Read more
“We will take the city from the 20th century to the 21st,” said the pro-EU Karacsony, who was one of the few opposition politicians to win a district in the previous election five years ago. “Budapest will be green and free, we will bring it back to Europe.”

Karácsony had compared the Budapest race to the Istanbul mayoral election in March, in which the candidate of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party was defeated by the opposition challenger.

“Istanbul voted against an aggressive illiberal power in many ways similar to Orbán’s regime,” Karácsony said before the vote.

Since 2010, Orbán has concentrated power and media organs in his hands, and regularly clashed with Brussels over migration and rule-of-law issues. He has also cruised to consecutive landslide victories at the polls, partly due to electoral rule changes he oversaw.

Fidesz had run a highly negative campaign attacking Karácsony for an allegedly pro-migration stance and his “unsuitability” for the job, and Orbán had threatened to withhold cooperation from municipalities lost by his party.

The favourite in the run-up to the vote, Tarlos and Fidesz, which brands itself as Christian-conservatve, were damaged by a sex scandal involving a Fidesz mayor in the western city of Gyor that erupted last week.

“We acknowledge this decision in Budapest, and stand ready to cooperate,” Orbán told supporters at a rally.

The elections were seen as a rare chance for the beleaguered opposition to roll back the power of Fidesz, which also hold a supermajority in parliament, and Orbán who has boasted about building an “illiberal state”.

Parties from left to right joined forces in an effort to wrest control of Fidesz-held municipalities and prevent an electoral rout for the first time in almost a decade. In many municipalities just one opposition challenger lined up against Fidesz.

Polls had still forecast only slight gains nationwide for the opposition outside the capital, but in another surprise it won 10 of 23 of Hungary’s main cities.

The vote was seen as a litmus test for its new strategy of cooperation, which could offer a route to mount a serious challenge to Orbán at the next general election in 2022.

“The win [in Budapest] was just the first step on the road to changing Hungary,” said Karácsony.

Andras Biro-Nagy, an analyst with Policy Solutions, said: “It proves that the new strategy of opposition cooperation works, it was its best result in years. Budapest is the big prize, but the breakthrough in numerous provincial cities is at least as important.

“It is the first crack in the Orbán system, and it seems guaranteed that the strategy will continue for 2022,” he said.

(14. 10. 2019 via theguardian.com)

Hungarian PM congratulates Polish gov’t for election win

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban congratulated Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party for their victory at a general election on Sunday, Reuters reported.

“There was a very important election in Poland from Hungary’s point of view today, where the Polish ruling party has secured a majority of seats in parliament and will be able to form a government on its own,” Orban was quoted as saying by the news agency.

“We congratulate our Polish friends,” he added.

His words come after Poland’s ruling conservatives won a convincing victory over opposition parties in the country’s parliamentary elections and secured a second term in power, according to provisional data announced by electoral officials on Monday.

(14. 10. 2019 via thenews.pl)

Polish parliamentary election: Partial results show ruling PiS party ahead in election

The first exit polls from Poland’s parliamentary election on Sunday showed the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party looked set to command an absolute majority in parliament.

The ruling party is to win the elections with 45.8% of votes, according to partial official results calculated on the basis of 72% of constituencies published early on Monday, with more results expected later in the day.

Poland’s biggest opposition grouping Civic Coalition is seen coming second with 22.3% of support.

A grouping of left-wing parties, The Left, came in third with 10.9%, while the bloc of agrarian PSL and anti-system Kukizs 15 has another 9.8%. The far-right Confederation was expected to get 6.6%.

PiS is also set to win 239 seats in the 460-strong lower house of parliament according to the latest IPSOS poll.

An overall majority in the lower house of parliament would allow PiS to continue its reforms of the justice system, media, and institutions in its second four-year term.

The forecasts showed “no major surprises,” Senior Associate at Visegrad Insight, Marcin Zaborowski, told Euronews, but the significant factor to look out for on Monday was the “margin of victory” for PiS.

He cautioned that official results would not necessarily reflect exit polls, adding that in the European Parliament elections in May, the two figures differed by a few percent.

Whether PiS will command an absolute majority in the final results is “on a knife-edge,” Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex, Aleks Szczerbiak, told Euronews.

“1% or 2%, either way, changes everything,” he added — if the ruling party drops this amount of percentage points they could lose the majority — but “at 45% or 46%, they’d be in the clear.”

Pollsters had predicted the ruling PiS would garner even more votes than it did in 2015 when it enticed more than 37% of the electorate which should, once again, allow it to govern alone.

Experts said easy victory for PiS would cement Poland’s slide towards conservatism and deepen its rifts with the EU.

The nationalist party has in its first term in power blended ideological conservatism with progressive measures. It introduced social handouts for every child born, doubled pensions and is now pledging to do the same to the minimum wage for workers.

But it has also talked about tightening already strict abortion laws and railed against migrants and LGBTQ people they say threaten the country’s Christian values.

It has also been sued by the EU Commission over reforms that the bloc said threaten judicial independence and been criticised for its continued support to fossil fuel.

In June, Poland was one of three EU members to veto a bid to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050 unless the bloc helped pay for renewable energy alternatives.

Then just two weeks ago, the Polish government opened the country’s first new mine in 25 years.

Still, smaller parties could still prove to be kingmakers with centrist and centre-left parties expected to grow their share of the vote.

Europe Elects, a poll aggregator expects the pro-EU Civic Coalition (KO) — composed of the centre-right, liberal and centre-left formations — of coming second, while the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) is predicted to reenter parliament after a scandal brought it down in 2015.

The results of the vote to the upper house of parliament, the Senate, consisting of 100 deputies, is still unclear. The Senate has the power to amend and delay lower house legislation and block changes to the constitution.

(14. 10. 2019 via euronews.com)

30099_copy_1_kaczynski_pis