Polish official fired after calling Holocaust law ‘stupid’

A Polish diplomat charged with improving contacts with Jews worldwide has been fired after he criticized his own government’s approach to regulating Holocaust speech, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. Jaroslaw Nowak, the plenipotentiary for contacts with the Jewish diaspora described a Holocaust speech law passed by his country’s ruling party as “stupid,” in an interview

Polish leader admits country bought powerful Israeli spyware

Poland’s most powerful politician has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied that it was being used to target his political opponents. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that the secret services in many countries

EU starts legal steps against Poland over constitutional court ruling

The European Commission launched an infringement procedure against Poland on Wednesday over rulings by the country’s constitutional tribunal in July and October that challenged the primacy of EU law over national law. “The Commission considers that these rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal are in breach of the general principles of autonomy, primacy, effectiveness and uniform

Poland’s lawmakers reject bill seeking to outlaw abortion

Poland’s lawmakers on Thursday rejected a civic legislative proposal that would have outlawed abortion as homicide. The vote to reject the proposal at the initial stage was 361-48 with 12 abstentions, and was greeted with applause. It was overwhelming, also because most among the 228 ruling right-wing party’s lawmakers voted against it. The Law and

Democracy slipping away at record rate, intergovernmental body warns

A greater number of countries are sliding towards authoritarianism, while the number of established democracies under threat has never been so high, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said on Monday. Populist politics, the use of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions to silence critics, a tendency of countries to mimic the anti-democratic behaviour of

‘Death to Jews,’ Polish nationalists shout at rally while burning book about Jews in Poland

Polish nationalists shouted “death to Jews” as they burned a book representing a historic pact protecting the rights of Poland’s Jews. The book burning Thursday at a rally in Kalisz, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants situated 120 miles southwest of Warsaw, was part of a series of nationalist events on Nov. 11, National Independence Day,

Thousands of Polish far-right sympathisers march on Independence Day – France24

Thousands of far-right sympathisers and nationalists march through Warsaw on Thursday in an annual Independence Day gathering after Poland’s nationalist rulers helped challenge a court ban on the event. Critics say in lending a hand to the November 11 march, an event marked by occasional violence, the Law and Justice (PiS) government is giving overt support

Protests in Poland after death of pregnant woman blamed on abortion ban

Silent protests have been held in a number of Polish cities in response to the death of a pregnant woman. Activists blame the near-total abortion ban introduced by Poland’s constitutional court last year for her death. Conservative commentators and politicians, however, have rejected such suggestions. “Sometimes women die in childbirth,” says an MP from the

Polish parliament debates bill to ban “promoting homosexuality” and LGBT parades

A bill proposing to ban LGBT pride parades and other public gatherings that “promote” non-heterosexual orientations and non-biological gender identities was debated yesterday evening in Poland’s parliament. The bill is a citizens’ initiative rather than one proposed by any political group. But it received backing last night from some MPs in Poland’s national-conservative ruling coalition.

EU court fines Poland 1 million euros a day for judiciary row – DW News

In breaking news from Brussels, the European Union’s top court has ordered Poland to pay one million euros a day over a legal dispute with the bloc. The European Court of Justice says Warsaw failed to heed an earlier EU ruling that demanded changes to some of Poland’s judicial reforms. The EU decision in July