WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland will tell the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) that it wishes to join in the first weeks after a new government is formed, the man widely tipped to be the next justice minister told Reuters, as Warsaw seeks to unblock European Union funds. The EPPO is an independent public prosecution office of the European Union which deals with cases affecting the bloc's financial interests.
Poland's pro-EU parties scored a first win in the new parliament Monday after general elections in October with their candidate elected speaker of the lower house, the country's second most important post.PiS holds 194 seats in the lower chamber, compared to 248 seats for the pro-EU opposition.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki aims to convince opposition party members who are like-minded on key issues to form a coalition government following the October elections, he told news website Interia.pl in an interview published on Saturday. Morawiecki's Law and Justice (PiS) party came first in the October parliamentary elections with 194 seats but fell far short of a majority in the 460-seat lower house (Sejm). Three pro-European opposition parties - Civic Coalition (KO), Third Way and the Left - which jointly won 248 mandates, say they are ready to form a cabinet led by opposition leader Donald Tusk and have urged President Andrzej Duda not to delay his appointment.
It was said that these were the most important elections since 1989, as a further Law and Justice (PiS) government would have cemented an increasingly illiberal system. In Western media outlets, the opposition’s victory was therefore celebrated as a triumph of a new liberal democratic trajectory. Not much noticed, however, was the underlying Ukrainian trajectory.
Three years after a landmark ruling severely restricted abortion rights in Poland and sparked massive protest movements, the public mood has shifted in favor of liberalizing the law. With a centrist political party poised to take power, will legal abortions return to Poland, asks Anita Karwowska in Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.