Tag: Poland

Poland appears to have changed its policy of unconditional support for Georgia against Russian intimidation, a recent interview given by the country's president suggests. Warsaw has also reportedly abandoned hope of securing the position of EU Ambassador to Tbilisi, the Polish press reports.

Poland's plans to give away tens of millions of carbon emissions permits to new power stations are drawing criticism from environmentalists, but the EU's climate chief says she is not worried.

The EU's Eastern European newcomers, who still need to catch up with the rest of the Union in terms of economic and social development, face an uphill battle to attain the 'climate targets' laid out in the bloc's 'Europe 2020' strategy, a round-up of articles from the EurActiv media network reveals.

After a dramatic night for Polish democracy, Bronisław Komorowski of the ruling liberal-conservative Civic Platform (PO) emerged as the winner in the presidential election run-off, held on Sunday (4 July). EurActiv Poland reports.

As 94% of Poland's electricity comes from coal, the country says it needs ''more time than others'' to meet its CO2 reduction targets outlined in the 'Europe 2020' strategy. Polish industry is even more critical of the goals. EurActiv Poland reports.

Despite their special interest in areas like energy security or neighbourhood policy, the East European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 have not yet become agenda-setters in Brussels, according to a new study.

"Hungary's turn to the right signals a broader challenge across Europe, and not the unfortunate malfunction of one of its youngest democracies," writes Joerg Forbrig, senior programme officer for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in a May paper.

''Being Polish is not a nationality but a profession,'' goes an old popular saying in the former Communist bloc. Even today, for many Poles, resourcefulness remains the only responses to an economic crisis in which the problem is not prices but salaries. EurActiv Poland reports.

Poland and Russia have been going through the pain and distress of the Smolensk airport tragedy in unison and the climate of rapprochement between the two nations is conducive to closing historical problems in contemporary Polish-Russian relations, writes the Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM) in an April commentary.

Mutual resentment between Poland and Russia is being replaced with openness and the beginnings of friendship in the emotional days since the tragic plane crash in Smolensk, in which the Polish president and his delegation lost their lives, Piotr Maciej Kaczyński, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), told EurActiv in an interview.

Polish President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others died today (10 April) as the presidential plane attempted to land in Smolensk, Russia, to commemorate the mass murder of 20,000 Poles who were killed on Stalin's orders seventy years ago in the nearby forests of Katyn. EurActiv Poland contributed to this article.

In a sight familiar in some West European countries but new to Poland, dozens of protesters demonstrated in a Warsaw suburb last weekend against the construction of a mosque.

Prime ministers from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary – the so-called Visegrad group – are meeting this morning (25 March) ahead of a two-day EU summit in Brussels to hammer out common positions on the EU's future diplomatic service and economic issues.

Due to its heavy reliance on coal, Poland is often referred to as the country with the greatest potential for green energy. However, the country still lags behind its European partners in clean tech investment, EurActiv Poland reports.

Belarussian police yesterday (16 February) dispersed an opposition rally and detained about 20 protesters expressing solidarity with ethnic Polish activists detained the day before. The move was strongly condemned by the European Union.

An ally of Angela Merkel vilified in Poland as a Nazi apologist said she would give up a seat on the board of a museum on the postwar expulsions of Germans from Eastern Europe, a move likely to calm a bitter row with Warsaw.

Poland and Ukraine still have minor problems to solve but are otherwise making good progress as they prepare to host Euro 2012, UEFA President Michel Platini said last weekend.

Citizens of former communist countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007 are increasingly hesitant about adopting the euro currency quickly, a Eurobarometer survey showed yesterday (25 January).

The Nord Stream pipeline project is "a waste of European consumers' money," Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told the Polish National Assembly's foreign affairs committee last week.

A train carrying over 200 refugees from the Caucasus residing in Poland was blocked yesterday (15 December) at the German border, Polish media reported. The refugees were on their way to protest to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg about poor living conditions.

Poland’s deep Catholic roots allowed one man to do more for his country than was humanly possible, writes Maria Graczyk, chief editor of EurActiv.pl, recalling the events that followed John Paul II's election to the Vatican in 1979 and the Berlin Wall's collapse ten years later.

In the 1980s, Polish intellectuals were the first to see Germany's reunification as the key to events triggering their country's liberation from the Soviet bloc. The episode is recounted by US journalist Elizabeth Pond, who recently sought the recollections of Lech Wałęsa and Janusz Reiter of Poland's Solidarność for EurActiv Germany.

Can the European Commission impose a cap on member states' CO2 emissions covered by the EU's emissions trading system? asks Christian Egenhofer, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), in an October paper, following the Court of First Instance's annulment of a European Commission decision to lower the carbon emission quotas of Poland and Estonia.

The Czech Republic could receive an influential post in the new European Commission in exchange for Eurosceptic President Václav Klaus's signature to finalise Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, conservative Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita speculated yesterday (1 October).