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Poland to Weaken Global Treaty by Making Landmines for Eastern Border and Possibly Ukraine
Condemning the plans, Humanity & Inclusion said antipersonnel mines "render land unusable for agriculture, block access to essential services, and cause casualties decades after conflicts end."
Dec 18, 2025
Just a couple of weeks after the annual Landmine Monitor highlighted rising global casualties from explosive remnants of war, Reuters reported Wednesday that Poland plans to start producing antipersonnel landmines, deploy them along its eastern border, and possibly export them to Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion.
As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that "antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty's six‑month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026."
Asked about the prospect of Poland producing the mines as soon as it leaves the convention—also called the Ottawa Treaty—Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told Reuters: "I would very much like that... We have such needs."
"We are interested in large quantities as soon as possible," Zalewski said. He added that "our starting point is our own needs. But for us, Ukraine is absolutely a priority because the European and Polish security line is on the Russia-Ukraine front."
Notes from Poland pointed out on social media Thursday that the mine plans come amid other developments in Poland's East Shield operation. As the Kraków-based outlet detailed Sunday, "Germany will send soldiers to Poland next year to support its neighbor's efforts to strengthen its borders with Russia and Belarus, which are also NATO and the European Union's eastern flank."
Humanity & Inclusion (HI), a group launched in 1982 by a pair of doctors helping Cambodian refugees affected by landmines, said in a statement to Common Dreams that it "strongly condemns Poland's decision to resume production of antipersonnel mines as soon as its withdrawal from the Ottawa Treaty becomes official in February."
HI stressed that "antipersonnel mines disproportionately harm civilians. They render land unusable for agriculture, block access to essential services, and cause casualties decades after conflicts end. Their use is devastating for civilian populations. Producing landmines is cheap, but removing them would be even more expensive and complicated."
"Plus, new production of landmines would make this weapon more available and easier to purchase," the group warned. "Such a decision normalizes a weapon that has been prohibited since 1999, when the Ottawa Treaty entered into force, and fragilizes the treaty."
"The Ottawa Treaty has been incredibly effective in protecting civilians and drying up the landmine market, a weapon that was no longer produced in Europe, and only assembled by a limited number of countries, including Russia, Iran, and North Korea, among others," HI added, citing the drop in landmine casualties since the convention entered into force.
In 1999, casualties were around 25,000 annually, according to ICBL. By 2023, they had dropped to 5,757 injured or killed. However, as the campaign revealed in its latest report at the beginning of December, there were at least 6,279 casualties in 2024—the highest yearly figure since 2020 and a 9% increase from the previous year.
In the report, ICBL outlined recent alleged mine use by not only Russia and Ukraine but also Cambodia, Iran, Myanmar, and North Korea. The group also flagged that, along with Poland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania are in the process of legally withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, while Ukraine is trying to unlawfully "suspend the operation" of the convention during its war with Russia.
ICBL director Tamar Gabelnick said at the time that "governments must speak out to uphold the treaty, prevent further departures, reinforce its provisions globally, and ensure no more countries use, produce, or acquire antipersonnel mines."
In a statement to Common Dreams this week, ICBL said that "Poland's announcement marks a deeply alarming escalation and brings Europe closer to the return of weapons that were deliberately banned because of their devastating humanitarian impact. Poland's announcement comes at a moment when Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania's withdrawal from the Mine Ban Treaty takes legal effect on December 27, 2025, compounding a dangerous erosion of civilian protection in Europe."
"Every antipersonnel landmine laid represents a life put at risk," ICBL continued. "History shows that around 90% of landmine casualties are civilians, nearly half of them children. This is precisely why the International Campaign to Ban Landmines has long called for the prohibition of these weapons and continues to do so today."
"Antipersonnel landmines cannot be part of any modern defense strategy. They are indiscriminate weapons whose harm far outweighs any claimed military utility," the campaign added. "Europe once led the world in rejecting landmines. Allowing their return would not strengthen security. It would undermine the humanitarian norms that protect civilians everywhere."
This article has been updated with a new comment from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
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NATO Article 4 Declaration Puts Poland 'Closest to Open Conflict Since WWII'
The decision by Prime Minister Donald Tusk came after the Polish military shot down several Russian drones that entered its airspace, marking the first time a NATO member has fired shots in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Sep 10, 2025
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty on Wednesday after 19 Russian drones flew into Polish territory late Tuesday night and into the early morning hours.
Speaking to Poland's parliament on Wednesday, Tusk said that it is "the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II," though he still said there was "no reason to believe we're on the brink of war."
The Polish military, along with NATO forces, shot down several of the drones, marking the first time a NATO-aligned country has fired a shot since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022.
According to Polish officials, the drones entered the nation's airspace amid a series of airstrikes directed at Western Ukraine. Though some damage to at least one home has been reported due to falling drone debris, there are no immediate reports of casualties, according to the New York Times.
Following what he called a "large-scale provocation" by Russia, Tusk took the significant step of invoking Article 4 of the NATO treaty for just the eighth time since the alliance's founding in 1949.
Short of the more drastic Article 5, which obligates NATO allies to defend one another militarily at a time of attack, Article 4 allows any member to call on the rest of the alliance to consult with them if they feel their territory, independence, or security is threatened.
Russia, for its part, said it had "no intentions to engage any targets on the territory of Poland." However, as German defense minister Boris Pistorius said in a quote to AFP, the drones were "clearly set on this course" and "did not have to fly this route to reach Ukraine."
In comments to The Guardian, Dr. Marion Messmer, senior research fellow at the foreign policy think tank Chatham House, agreed it was "unlikely that this was an accident" and said that Russia was likely "trying to test where NATO's red lines are."
European leaders issued statements of solidarity following the attack.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it an "egregious and unprecedented violation of Polish and NATO airspace" and pledged to "ramp up the pressure on [Russian President] Putin until there is a just and lasting peace." The UK's secretary of state for defense, John Healey, said he would ask British armed forces "to look at options to bolster NATO's air defense over Poland."
French President Emmanuel Macron called it a "reckless escalation," adding that France will "not compromise on the security of the Allies."
Tusk asserted that "words are not enough" and has requested more material support from Poland's allies, which could point to the risk of further escalation.
While the invocation of Article 4 does not always presage a hot war, Yasraj Sharma writes for Al Jazeera that it "would serve as a political precursor to Article 5 deliberations."
Following the attack, the US ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, said in a post on X that the United States "will defend every inch of NATO territory," suggesting a possible willingness for the US to become more directly involved in the hostilities after providing over $128 billion in military and other aid to Ukraine since Russia first attacked in 2022.
The US has roughly 10,000 troops stationed in Poland as part of a permanent military presence in the country.
US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, wrote in an uncharacteristically brief post on Truth Social: "What's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go!"
Trump plans to speak with Poland's president, Karol Nawrocki, on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The drone attack came shortly after Trump threatened to impose harsher sanctions on Russia following its ramp-up of attacks on Kyiv over the weekend, yet another policy shift by the US president after he appeared interested in cutting a deal favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit last month.
In the New York Times, Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski writes that with Russia's entry into Polish airspace, along with its more aggressive attacks on Ukraine, "Putin is signaling that he will not compromise on his core demands even as he claims that Russia is still ready to make a deal."
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Far-Right Karol Nawrocki, Backed by Trump and Orbán, Wins Polish Presidency
"Nawrocki's win has given pro-Donald Trump, anti-liberal, anti-E.U. forces across the continent a shot in the arm."
Jun 02, 2025
Far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki emerged Monday as the narrow winner of Poland's presidential election, a contest in which the Trump administration in the U.S. and Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, weighed in on the side of their ideological compatriot.
Nawrocki's victory over Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor who was representing the party of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, was celebrated by right-wing figures around the world, including Orbán and Jordan Bardella, the head of France's far-right National Rally party.
"The Polish people have spoken and their free and democratic choice must be respected, including by the Brussels leaders who ardently hoped for their defeat," Bardella wrote on social media following news that Nawrocki, a historian and "former football hooligan" backed by Poland's Law and Justice Party, prevailed in one of the closest elections in the country's history.
Nawrocki's win came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem endorsed him during a speech at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Poland last week.
"[U.S. President] Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country," said Noem. "If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally. You will continue to have a U.S. military presence here... and you will have equipment that is American-made, high quality."
In early May, Nawrocki met with Trump in the Oval Office in what was seen as a show of support from the White House ahead of the election.
Franziska Davies, assistant professor of Eastern and Central-Eastern European History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, wrote that Nawrocki's win is "bad news for Poland, for Europe, for Ukraine, and for democracy."
As the Financial Times reported, "Nawrocki ran a campaign centred on conservative Catholic values and rhetoric attacking the E.U.'s stance on migration and climate change."
"The 42-year-old is a political ally of Hungary's premier Viktor Orbán and other Eurosceptic populists, and has suggested that he could seek to alter Poland's strongly pro-Ukraine stance, as one of the NATO alliance's most important Eastern members," FT added. "While Poland's prime minister holds more political power, the president can block legislation, and nominates senior posts such as the central bank governor."
Adam Simpson, senior lecturer in International Studies in Justice and Society at the University of South Australia, warned Monday that the ensuing "legislative gridlock could well see Law and Justice return to government in the 2027 general elections, which would lock in the anti-democratic changes the party made during their last term in office from 2015–2023."
"This included eroding Poland's judicial independence by effectively taking control of judicial appointments and the Supreme Court," Simpson added. "Nawrocki's win has given pro-Donald Trump, anti-liberal, anti-E.U. forces across the continent a shot in the arm. It's bad news for the E.U., Ukraine, and women."
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What Other Countries Can Teach Us About Defending a Democracy in Crisis
In recent years, autocrats have been defeated in Brazil, Poland, and South Korea. What can we learn from the brave people who stood up to the dragon and saved their villages?
Apr 28, 2025
The best way of preventing authoritarian leaders from overthrowing democracies is to make sure that they never get into power in the first place. That’s what the French did last year when parties on the left united and then made a second-round pact with the centrists to prevent Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally from winning a parliamentary majority. And now the courts have convicted Le Pen of corruption and barred her from running for office.
Americans have obviously screwed the pooch on that particular method of preventing autocracy. Voted out of office, slapped with multiple suits, convicted of a felony, denounced by dozens of his former appointees, Donald Trump nevertheless managed to use these setbacks as evidence that even a billionaire ex-president can be an “outsider” who’s taking on the “establishment” and sticking up for the “little guy.”
A decade of Trump? That’s a sobering prospect. A 100-year-old president-for-life presiding over the dying embers of American society? A horror story indeed.
On the eve of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the challenge has now become infinitely more difficult. America is now living through that horror movie cliché where the call is coming from inside the house. The seemingly indestructible culprit has returned for a more horrifying sequel to destroy U.S. democracy from within. Worse, all the failures of his first term are now helping him craft more successful disruptions in his second.
With a cowboy president shooting from the hip in all directions, what can Americans do to prevent Trump from taking down democracy (not to mention the economy, the international system, and the planet)? Even New York Times columnist David Brooks, who admits in a staggering understatement that “he’s not a movement guy,” has recently declared that “it’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.”
Alas, America has no history of such uprisings from which to draw, except perhaps the American Revolution and that was a long time ago. With few domestic examples to inspire, everyone is now searching the globe for cases of successful resistance to authoritarianism.
Unfortunately, most examples of such uprisings involved years and years of organizing. It took a decade to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, nearly two decades to oust Augusto Pinochet in Chile, slightly more than two decades to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and more than a half-century to depose the Assad’s father-and-son regime in Syria.
A decade of Trump? That’s a sobering prospect. A 100-year-old president-for-life presiding over the dying embers of American society? A horror story indeed.
But there are other examples of more compressed resistance from which Americans committed to a national civic uprising can take inspiration. In recent years, autocrats have been defeated in Brazil, Poland, and South Korea. What can we learn from the brave people who stood up to the dragon and saved their villages?
Dumping Bolsonaro
Like the United States, Brazil is a deeply divided country, with an even larger wealth gap. As Oxfam reports, “Brazil’s six richest men have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the population; around 100 million people. The country’s richest 5% have the same income as the remaining 95%.”
The leftist Workers’ Party successfully mobilized the have-nots to win a series of elections in the 2000s. But in 2018, buoyed in part by Donald Trump’s win in 2016, an aggressive, nationalist outsider, Jair Bolsonaro, capitalized on voter frustration with corruption and persistent poverty to become the country’s president. The leading reason for voters to back the sexist, homophobic, religiously conservative Bolsonaro was anti-incumbent sentiment, a profound dissatisfaction with the political status quo.
Once in office, Bolsonaro threatened to pack the Supreme Court with his supporters and, when that failed, to ignore its rulings. He praised the country’s past military dictatorship and threatened to send troops into the streets to restore “order.” He ramped up the disastrous deforestation of the Amazon. Like Trump, he failed to address the Covid-19 pandemic, pushing Brazil to the top of the list of countries with the most fatalities (after the United States and Russia).
There were plenty of protests against Bolsonaro. But his allies in Congress provided a legislative shield against impeachment. Which meant that the most effective form of resistance turned out to be judicial. And that judicial resistance largely boiled down to one person, Alexandre de Moraes, a member of the country’s Supreme Court. As Jon Lee Anderson explains in The New Yorker:
After Bolsonaro took office, in 2019, de Moraes led an ever-expanding series of investigations into him and his family. As Bolsonaro’s supporters formed “digital militias” that flooded the internet with disinformation—claiming that political opponents were pedophiles, spreading blatant lies about their policies, inventing conspiracies—de Moraes fought to force them offline. Granted special powers by the judiciary, he suspended accounts belonging to legislators, business magnates, and political commentators for posts that he described as harmful to Brazilian democracy.
These actions went a long way toward constraining Bolsonaro’s power and reducing his overall popularity, so that by the time the next elections rolled around in 2022, the strongman lost his reelection bid.
U.S. Supreme Court justices don’t have the same kind of power as their Brazilian counterparts. The court as a whole has an even more limited ability to constrain the Trump administration if the latter decides not to implement the decisions it doesn’t like. It’s also going to be difficult to rein in Trump’s digital militias, given Elon Musk’s control of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg’s capitulation to Trump over at Facebook.
But one lesson from the Brazilian case is the need to launch immediate investigations into government corruption and misconduct. This can be done in the United States by way of congressional requests for reports by the Congressional Research Service, which for instance deemed the defunding of USAID to be unconstitutional, or to the Government Accountability Office, which has been tasked to study the impact of the mass firings of federal workers. Lawmakers can also hold informal hearings on the unconstitutional actions of DOGE and the executive branch.
Don’t wait and play a defensive game. Be as bold as the Brazilians against Bolsonaro and go on the offensive.
Displacing Law and Justice
The right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) took electoral advantage of the discontent of Polish voters, particularly in the countryside, who had not benefited from the country’s rush to capitalism after 1989. Poland A did well by the liberal reforms; Poland B didn’t and took revenge at the polls by voting for PiS.
Like Donald Trump and his MAGA forces, PiS had a first taste of power when it governed for two years in a coalition government and didn’t accomplish much. When it came roaring back in 2015, PiS knew exactly what to do. First, it went after the courts. PiS was determined to destroy the country’s constitutional order and remake Polish society according to conservative, nationalist, and religious principles.
The first target was the constitutional court, which had blocked PiS initiatives in that first administration. As Christian Davies writes:
The ruling party’s strategy played out in three parts: First, to deny opposition-appointed judges from taking their place on the court. Second, to pass laws designed to paralyze the court and prevent it from functioning effectively. Third, to force through the appointment of judges loyal to the ruling party. All this was done in open defiance of the law, the constitution, and multiple rulings issued by the Tribunal itself.
This attack on the judiciary, which was also accompanied by assaults on the media, free speech, and nonprofit organizations, precipitated a battle with the European Union, which put pressure on the Polish government to reverse its judicial “reforms.” But with the courts now aligned with its agenda, PiS looked as though it would consolidate its power indefinitely. In the 2019 elections, it even expanded its legislative majority in the lower house of parliament.
Four years later, thanks to its control of the media and other methods of rigging political outcomes, PiS again came out on top in the 2023 parliamentary elections with 35% of the vote. But this time, three opposition parties were able to unite to sideline PiS and form a new government. Poland’s constitutional crisis had come to an end.
How did the Polish opposition manage to beat a clearly still-popular party?
Perhaps the E.U. pressuring from the outside might have helped. But part of the PiS base was Euroskeptical, so the party could use E.U. pressure to rally its nationalist supporters.
More influential was the ability of the Polish opposition to overcome its fractiousness and bring together leftists, liberals, Solidarity true believers, traditional conservatives, and interest-group advocates like environmentalists and pro-choice feminists. In 2015, after the PiS government refused to follow a Constitutional Court verdict, major street protests broke out and a journalist called for a new civic movement patterned after the communist-era dissident group, the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR). “We have to remember, the goal isn’t to overturn the legally elected authorities of the country, but rather the defense of democracy,” the journalist wrote.
Out of this ferment came the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), which organized a series of massive protests around the country. Within a few months, it had garnered the support of 40% of the population. Because it wasn’t a party, KOD could appeal to a large segment of the population that had become disgusted with electoral politics. It successfully promoted the message that PiS was no ordinary party pushing for an ordinary platform of policies. Rather, PiS was a threat to the very legacy of the Solidarity movement that had liberated the country.
The United States needs just such a nonpartisan umbrella organization that can appeal to the largest swath of the anti-Trump community. Let’s call it the Society Organized to Save American Democracy (SOSAD). It stands for mom, baseball, apple pie, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, fairly compensated work, equal rights for all: in short everything that makes America truly great.
Reversing a Coup
To overcome a parliament that blocked his policies, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on the evening of December 3, 2024. The president ordered police to seal off the parliament and special forces to enter the building.
But the coup lasted for only a few hours. Enough members of parliament managed to get into the building that night and hold a vote to lift martial law. Meanwhile, spurred by news spread rapidly by electronic means, citizens began to gather in public places to protest Yoon’s actions.
South Koreans saved their democracy because of brave legislators and determined civil society activists. The country has a long history of civic engagement, going back to the democratization movement of the 1970s and 1980s and efforts to bring down former President Park Geun-Hye through months of candlelight vigils.
The defense of democracy perhaps feels more urgent in countries where it’s not taken for granted.
“The speed of this latest democratic defense suggests that lessons learned during decades of mobilization have strengthened South Korea’s institutional guardrails and nationwide vigilance against executive abuse,” writes Darcie Draudt-Véjares.
This month, the country’s constitutional court upheld the parliament’s impeachment and officially removed Yoon from office.
The lessons from the South Korean case are clear. U.S. legislators have to step up—as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) did with his 25-hour filibuster and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been doing with their recent rallies. Meanwhile, civil society must organize rapid responses, not just within silos (like the recent letter from university presidents) but across institutions.
One key lesson from the South Korean experience is the role of labor. After Yoon’s martial law announcement, the main trade union confederation immediately called for a general strike until the president stepped down. The prospect of a significant hit to the Korean economy was a wake-up call for many who hadn’t yet made up their minds about Yoon.
U.S. labor has had a love-hate relationship with Trump. Many labor leaders refused to back the candidate even as support among rank-and-file members surged. Several key unions—Teamsters, UAW—have been enthusiastic about Trump’s tariffs.
Any opposition to Trump must appeal to working people who feel ignored and undervalued by politicians and the elite. They are a core part of Trump’s support, but they are certainly persuadable. When the costs of Trump’s actions begin to rise—at the pump, in the grocery store, through reduced checks from Medicare and Medicaid—they may well be ready for a political change.
Why were Poles, Koreans, and Brazilians able to turn back authoritarianism where others have failed? All three have histories of strong civil society engagement in politics. All three had credible leaders—Donald Tusk, Lee Jae-myung, Lula—who could step in as alternatives.
And all three countries have had rather short experiences of democratic rule. In 1981, South Koreans were living in the shadow of martial law, which had been declared the previous year. Poles entered a martial law period in December of that year. And Brazilians were living under a military dictatorship that wouldn’t collapse until 1985.
The defense of democracy perhaps feels more urgent in countries where it’s not taken for granted. So far, America is failing the stress test that Trump is applying to the country’s democratic institutions. But if Americans are willing to learn some lessons from Brazil, Poland, and Korea, maybe we can defeat the dragon as well.
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Trump Cuts, NATO Withdrawals Weakening Landmine Treaty and Endangering Lives
"The Trump administration's deep cuts to foreign aid are now disrupting mine clearance operations," one campaigner said ahead of International Day of Mine Action.
Apr 01, 2025
International Day for Mine Action on April 4 is typically an occasion to take stock of humanity's progress toward eradicating the scourge of landmines; however, with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump dramatically slashing foreign aid and several European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization members withdrawing from the landmark Mine Ban Treaty, campaigners say there's little worth celebrating this Friday.
Mary Wareham, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Crisis, Conflict, and Arms program, said Tuesday that International Day of Mine Action "is a moment to highlight the work of the thousands of deminers around the world who clear and destroy landmines and explosive remnants of war."
"They risk their lives to help communities recover from armed conflict and its intergenerational impacts," Wareham—a joint recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)—continued. "But due to devastating developments driven largely by two countries that have not banned antipersonnel landmines, the United States and Russia, this Mine Action Day does not feel like much of a celebration."
"For over three decades, the U.S. has been the world's largest contributor to humanitarian demining, mine risk education, and rehabilitation programs for landmine survivors," Wareham noted. "But the Trump administration's deep cuts to foreign aid are now disrupting mine clearance operations. Thousands of deminers have been fired or put on administrative leave pending the completion of so-called reviews. It's unclear if this crucial support will continue. The price of Trump administration cuts will be evident as casualties increase."
Responding to the Trump cuts, Anne Héry, advocacy director at the Maryland-based group Humanity & Inclusion—a founding ICBL member—said:
Any delay in clearance prolongs the danger of contamination by explosive ordnance for affected populations. Clearance operations save lives, especially children, who are often victims of explosive devices. They also enable communities to use land for agriculture, construction, and other economic activities. This funding cut will further displace vulnerable populations who cannot return home due to contamination. It will also result in limited access to schools, healthcare facilities, and water sources in contaminated areas.
The Trump administration's seeming disdain for Ukrainian—and by extension much of Europe's—security concerns, combined with Russia's ongoing invasion and occupation of much of Ukraine, has some E.U. and NATO members looking for other ways to defend against potential Russian aggression.
Earlier this month, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuaniasaid they would withdraw from the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, also known as the Ottawa Treaty and the Mine Ban Treaty.
In a joint statement, the four countries' defense ministers explained that "military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased" and that "with this decision we are sending a clear message [that] our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our security needs."
As Wareham also noted: "Russian forces have used antipersonnel landmines extensively in Ukraine since 2022, causing civilian casualties and contaminating agricultural land. Ukraine has also used antipersonnel mines and has received them from the U.S., in violation of the Mine Ban Treaty."
In another blow to the Mine Ban Treaty, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo announced Tuesday that Finland is preparing to quit the pact, a move he said "will give us the possibility to prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way."
#Estonia #Latvia #Lithuania #Finland #Poland – DO NOT EXIT the Mine Ban Treaty! Your choices shape the future. "Young people are watching, and we’re counting on you" to uphold the ban on landmines! #MineFreeWorld #ProtectMineBan
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— International Campaign to Ban Landmines (@minefreeworld.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Wareham said that "the proposed treaty withdrawals raise the question of what other humanitarian disarmament treaties are at risk: chemical weapons? cluster munitions? The military utility of any weapon must be weighed against the expected humanitarian damage."
"To avoid further eroding humanitarian norms, Poland and the Baltic states should reject proposals to leave the Mine Ban Treaty," she added. "They should instead reaffirm their collective commitment to humanitarian norms aimed at safeguarding humanity in war."
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EU Crisis Official Warns of 'Climate Breakdown' Amid Deadly Wildfires and Flooding
"These extreme weather events that used to be once in a lifetime are now an almost annual occurrence," said Janez Lenarčič.
Sep 18, 2024
With the Portuguese government declaring a "state of calamity" over wildfires that have killed at least seven people, and the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Central and Eastern Europe upended by deadly flooding, the European Union's top crisis official said the bloc must face the reality made evident by the disasters: "This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future."
A year after Europe was found to be the world's fastest-warming continent in an analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the E.U.'s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarčič told the European Parliament on Wednesday that "the global reality of the climate breakdown has moved into the everyday lives of Europeans."
"Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly," said Lenarčič. "We face a Europe that is simultaneously flooding and burning. These extreme weather events that used to be once in a lifetime are now an almost annual occurrence."
As countries including Poland, Romania, Austria, and the Czech Republic were reeling from flooding caused by Storm Boris in recent days, more than 478 square miles in Portugal's northern region were torched by fast-moving wildfires that started over the weekend.
Dozens of homes have been destroyed by more than 100 separate wildfires as officials deployed 5,000 firefighters to try to control the blazes on Wednesday. Spain, France, and Italy—which is now also preparing for heavy rainfall like the torrential downpour that inundated Central and Eastern Europe—contributed waterbombing aircraft.
Lenarčič focused his address largely on the need to ramp up disaster preparedness, noting that the rise in costs for repairing infrastructure destroyed by storms and fires has ballooned in recent decades.
"The average cost of disasters in the 1980s was 8 billion euros per year," said Lenarčič. "Meanwhile in 2022 alone, the damages surpassed 50 billion euros per year... The cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action."
Lenarčič called on the European Commission to work closely with E.U. member states to implement the bloc's Floods Directive and a robust water resilience strategy to tackle catastrophic flooding and water shortages.
"Such challenges cannot be tackled solely through the limited portfolio of civil protection," the commissioner said.
The Left in the European Parliament, a coalition of progressive parties, echoed Lenarčič's call to strengthen civil protection, but also emphasized the need to tackle "climate change and its impacts."
Progressives in Parliament have pushed member states to meet the goals set by the European Green Deal, a set of climate policies aimed at ensuring net-zero fossil fuel emissions by 2050 and slashing emissions by at least 55% by 2030.
"Our success will depend on how determined we are to combat climate change together in order to reduce emissions," said Terry Reintke, a German lawmaker who is co-president of the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) group in the European Parliament.
With right-wing parties making significant gains in the bloc's parliamentary elections in June, analysts have said passing ambitious climate policies and targets will be more difficult.
Following the implementation of parts of the Green Deal, emissions are down by nearly a third from 1990 across the bloc, and member states are building wind and solar infrastructure. But right-wing leaders have pushed to block a ban on new gas- and diesel-powered cars that was set to take effect in 2035.
Far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in June that the proposed ban "was an ideological folly, which absolutely must be corrected."
On Wednesday, Italy's civil protection service issued 50 yellow alerts for the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions, warning that the areas would face the risk of landslides and flooding as they are expected to see the equivalent of two months of rainfall in the next three days.
The heavy rains have moved across Central Europe from parts of the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, and other countries, with at least 21 people killed by flooding.
"The E.U. must do everything in its power to help those affected by the devastating floods in many different E.U. countries," said the Greens/EFA. "These floods show that more than ever our fight against climate change is a common social and economic challenge we must tackle together."
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Autocrats Worse Than Trump? Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid
Here's the question to be asking, both in the U.S. and around the world: at what point will the far right achieve a critical mass of support such that it can kick away the ladder that it used to climb to power?
Jun 23, 2024
Poland is supposed to be one of the politically sane places in Europe right now. The far-right Law and Justice Party lost national elections last year to a centrist coalition and exited power after eight long years of democratic repression. Donald Tusk, who’d previously been the president of the European Council, once again became the Polish prime minister. His government immediately set about restoring the rule of law that the Law and Justice Party had been so determined to dismantle.
Sounds good, right?
Yes, but then there’s Grzegorz Braun.
Braun is a member of a party called Konfederacja that stands just to the left of the Nazis. Think that’s an overstatement? Back in December, Braun used a fire extinguisher to put out the candles on a menorah in the Polish parliament, which had been set up to celebrate Hanukah. Just in case anyone might misinterpret the gesture—perhaps he though it was a fire risk?—Braun denounced the Jewish holiday as “satanic” and insisted that “those who take part in acts of satanic worship should be ashamed.” He also favors the criminalization of homosexuality. And he was the only Polish parliamentarian to oppose a resolution in 2022 denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Is there nothing that far-right politicians can say or do these days that disqualifies them in the minds of voters from holding public office?
And yet, despite these toxic positions, Braun was just elected to represent Poland in the European parliament. And so were five other members of his Konfederacja party, who have equally toxic views. That’s a gain of six seats over their previous showing in the 2019 elections, which had been zero. An astonishing 12 percent of Polish voters endorsed the positions of Braun and his colleagues.
Sure, in those same EU elections, Tusk’s centrist party managed to squeak by Law and Justice, which lost seven of their seats. But it was the party even further to the right that seemed to benefit.
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Swing to the Right
The big takeaway from the recent European Parliament elections was the success of far-right parties. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won over 31 percent of the vote in France, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to make the counter-intuitive decision to dissolve parliament and call new elections. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader in Italy, also managed to increase her party’s share of support.
And the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came in second in Germany with a big boost from the under-30 crowd, who didn’t seem to care about the various scandals involving the far-right party’s leadership. Because of the statements of party member Maximilian Krahl—he said that not all Nazi SS members were war criminals—the AfD was actually kicked out of the Identity and Democracy bloc. And then the AfD kicked Krahl out of the party, not only because of those statements but also because his close ties to Russia and China were attracting unwanted scrutiny. German voters elected him to the European parliament anyway.
Is there nothing that far-right politicians can say or do these days that disqualifies them in the minds of voters from holding public office? Each month, it seems that a new red line is crossed: anti-Semitism, extraordinary corruption, a felony conviction. What’s next, the use of germ warfare?
In the European parliament elections, the far right also took first place in Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia and tied for first in the Netherlands. Indeed, the only places that the far right didn’t do better than their last outing were Sweden, Finland, and Portugal, but even here the results weren’t exactly reassuring. The far-right Sweden Democrats remained steady at 3 seats (as did the Danish People’s Party at one seat). The Portuguese far right Chega party actually made it into the European Parliament for the first time with two seats. Only the True Finns party lost representatives and it was a drop of only one seat.
The good news is that the far-right electoral coalitions—the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR), the Identity and Democracy bloc (ID), and the unaffiliated bloc that includes Fidesz and now the AfD—didn’t win enough votes to take over the leadership of the parliament. The ECR gained 14 seats (thanks largely to Meloni in Italy), the ID gained 9 seats (thanks largely to Le Pen in France), and the now-unaffiliated AfD increased their delegation by six seats. That puts the far right at nearly one-quarter of the total number of seats.
But the center right also did well in the election, increasing their total number of seats to 190. The ECR will not be forced to form a governing coalition with the far right, and that means that the European consensus on the green energy transition will remain more-or-less intact.
The Not-So-Long March
Let’s face it: the European parliament is not the most powerful institution around. What’s important about the far right’s victories is their apparent abandonment of any desire to destroy the EU or, at least, withdraw from it. The new far-right strategy is borrowed from the left (just like some of its economic program): a “long march through the institutions” in order to control them. Bye-bye Brexit and its heir apparents: Nexit, Grexit, Frexit. The far right wants to conquer Brussels.
Meanwhile, it is continuing its long march through national institutions. In Belgium, in federal elections earlier this month, the far-right, Euroskeptical, Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang came in second, behind a right-wing, Euroskeptical, Flemish nationalist party New Flemish Alliance. Traditionally, Belgian parties have agreed not to partner with Vlaams Belang to form governments. But with the New Flemish Alliance moving ever further to the right, the Belgians might be on the verge of breaking with this informal pact. Don’t expect a new government any time soon though: it took 18 months to forge a ruling coalition five years ago.
In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party is on track to win elections in September. Its coalition government with the Christian Democratic People’s Party collapsed in 2019 because of the Ibiza affair, which linked Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party to a corrupt deal involving a woman he thought was a well-connected Russian. The Freedom Party’s adulterously close relationship to Russia has not seemed to diminish its popularity. Another recent spy scandal broke, involving a top intelligence official passing information to Russia in exchange for money, which took place when the Freedom Party was in charge of the Interior Ministry. And yet Austrian voters concluded that this was just the type of party to send to the European parliament.
And then there’s France. Who knows, perhaps the French far right, too, will take over after the snap elections that Macron has called. The French, it seems, now hate Paris as much as they hate Brussels (the seat of the EU). Marine Le Pen is taking advantage of an anti-elitist, anti-globalist, anti-technocrat spirit that is rebranding reactionary as merely rebellious (sound familiar?). That’s bad news for Macron, whose every gesture and remark scream “Paris elite.” Fortunately, a more genuine challenge to the French orthodoxy has emerged on the left, as the Socialist, Communist, France Unbowed, and Ecologists parties have formed a new coalition. It is currently running neck and neck with Le Pen’s National Rally.
In The Netherlands, meanwhile, the far right has finally managed to put together a coalition government after their surprise victory in elections last year. Firebrand Geert Wilders had to give up on his desire to become prime minister, but in exchange his Party for Freedom (PVV) will control five ministries.
The new head of the migration and asylum ministry, Marjolein Faber of the PVV, is perhaps the last person you’d want in charge of a sensitive issue like immigration. She favors the abolition of Islam. She has called migration “repopulation,” a popular word in the far-right lexicon that has roots in the German word umvolkung, which was used by the Nazis and which today has much the same connotation as the “replacement” of majority white populations with non-white immigrants. And she has been guilty of the worst kind of racial profiling when she said that a stabbing suspect looked like a “North African” when witnesses reported otherwise.
Be Afraid, Very Afraid
Faber, Krahl, Braun: these far-right politicians make Donald Trump look like a conservative Democrat (which he used to be before opportunism beckoned). Of course, the Eurocrazies don’t have as much power as Trump might once again have. But the really scary part is how routine it has become for such people—who, a generation ago, would have been just kooks making long-winded speeches from the audience at public forums—to now be in positions of real responsibility.
It’s also frightening because it’s not just Europe that has been affected by this peculiar political disease. Narendra Modi, despite a drop in his party’s support in the latest elections, will continue on as prime minister of India. Nayib Bukele, the telegenic autocrat in El Salvador, won a supermajority in parliament earlier this year for his New Ideas party. And Vladimir Putin, no surprise here, won his election in Russia.
Trump was blocked from doing his worst by the institutions of a democratic society (Congress, state governments, courts, conscientious objectors at all levels). The EU, after this near miss with near fascism, will also be able to prevent the far right from unraveling the rule of law.
But at what point will the far right achieve a critical mass of support such that it can kick away the ladder that it used to climb to power? The far right’s long march through the institutions has only one ultimate destination: autocracy.
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Will the US Choose Democracy or Extreme Wealth Concentration?
This year’s election will not only decide whether we’re going to let Trump or a similar Republican end American democracy; it will also, if enough of us show up, determine if we can purge our political system of big money.
Jan 17, 2024
So, Donald Trump won Iowa. A crazed billionaire who wants to “suspend the Constitution“ and claims the right to a murder his political enemies. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Imagine.
Fox “News” shuts down (or just decides to only tell the truth), and most of the steam goes out of the right-wing populist MAGA movement which its billionaire owners helped create in the U.S. Insurrectionist members of Congress find themselves in jail facing sedition charges, as the previous leader of the country is under criminal investigation for taking help from Putin’s Russia. The government begins the process of decriminalizing abortion nationwide. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is overturned and, without the flow of billionaire money directing their votes, Congress begins to actually pass laws that reflect the desires of the majority of the people.
Princeton scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page famously found that the odds of average Americans’ political desires being translated into policy are about the same as “random noise.”
Unless you read international newspapers like the Financial Times, odds are you have no idea that same scenario is now playing out in Poland which, for the previous eight years, had been suffering under a Trump-like administration.
Last summer, progressive Polish politician Donald Tusk promised he was going to clean up that country with an “iron broom.” Few took his promise seriously, but after being sworn into office last month, he’s actually doing it. As Maciej Kisilowski writes for the Financial Times, just a few days after Tusk became prime minister:
…Poland’s politicized public television station, notorious for its xenophobic, homophobic, and racist messages, abruptly went dark. Tusk’s culture ministry summarily dismissed the station’s board and stopped broadcasts to prevent the outgoing leadership from inflaming tensions by airing live the takeover of the group’s headquarters.
Last week two of the top right-wing politicians in Poland were arrested for abuse of power during the previous regime, while only a few hundred people showed up to protest the end of right-wing programming on the nation’s main television network.
Last Thursday there was a march to protest the new progressive prime minister, but the reaction was both tepid and nonviolent. As Kisilowski writes for the Financial Times:
These decisive, if heavy-handed, actions come at a time when democrats globally are searching for strategies to deal with populists. In the U.S., for example, there is intense debate about whether the protracted legal cases against Donald Trump are serving to boost his campaign to return to the White House. Perhaps Tusk’s approach offers hope.
Dislodging the death grip the GOP has on American politics will be more difficult than in Poland, in large part because five corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision.
The 2020 election cost over $14 billion. The 2016 election was only $6.5 billion. But in 2008, two years before Citizens United, it hadn’t even hit $1 billion: total spending with a mere $717 million. As the executive director of the money tracking opensecrets.org, Sheila Krumholz, said:
Total outside spending is surprisingly high for this point in the cycle—we’re already at nearly $230 million. That’s more than twice the previous record through this point in the cycle, which was back in 2016. But it’s more than five times as much as was spent by this point in the last presidential cycle in 2020.
Right-wing fascist-adjacent billionaires have used that open door to severely corrupt our political system, leading to massive gridlock when it comes to anything average people want.
Meanwhile, billionaires got tax cuts and deregulation making them vastly richer at the same time the companies that made them rich refuse to even commit to paying their workers a living wage (fewer than 1% of the world’s top companies have made such a commitment).
As a result, Princeton scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page famously found that the odds of average Americans’ political desires being translated into policy are about the same as “random noise.”
On the other hand, the new American system created by Republicans on our Supreme Court works quite well for the morbidly rich. The people Gilens and Page refer to as the “economic elites” frequently get everything they want from the political class.
They wrote that we still have the “features” of democracy, like elections, but ended their paper with this cautionary note:
[W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.
So, here we are.
If, in a zoo somewhere, a single chimpanzee had risen up and taken all the food from all the other chimpanzees and was hoarding it without being challenged, scientists from all over the world would be trying to figure out what was wrong with that chimpanzee and why the others tolerated his theft.
As Oxfam International pointed out in a report timed to correspond with the kickoff of the billionaire love-fest at Davos this week, the five richest men in the world—four of them Americans—saw their net worth more than double over the past three years from $405 billion to $869 billion.
Since those five corrupt Republicans on the Court also ruled in Citizens United that corporations are “persons” with nearly-full access to the Bill of Rights—including the right to use money to pay off politicians (the Republicans on the Court call it First Amendment-protected “free speech”)—the corporations that are producing these billionaires are also gouging American consumers as hard and fast as they can.
As Oxfam noted (keep in mind, “profit“ means, essentially, “the money that’s left over after all of our business expenses, including payroll, that we, the owners, get to split up and keep for ourselves”):
Mirroring the fortunes of the super-rich, large firms are set to smash their annual profit records in 2023. 148 of the world’s biggest corporations together raked in $1.8 trillion in total net profits in the year to June 2023, a 52% jump compared to average net profits in 2018-2021. Their windfall profits surged to nearly $700 billion.
That money isn’t going to workers, though, who’ve seen their real, inflation-adjusted wages fall worldwide in the same period. Instead:
The report finds that for every $100 of profit made by 96 major corporations between July 2022 and June 2023, $82 was paid out to rich shareholders… It would take 1,200 years for a woman working in the health and social sector to earn what the average CEO in the biggest 100 Fortune companies earns in a year.
Thanks to Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking vote in Citizens United, Americas are not getting what they want. Which is another way of saying the morbidly rich and the judges and politicians they’ve bought are actively breaking our democratic republic.
On the eve of the 2016 election of Donald Trump, for example, the Progressive Change Institute did a nationwide survey of likely voters. The results were stark:
— 84% want the government to negotiate drug prices.
— 79% support expanding Social Security (which Haley and DeSantis both just last week promised to cut).
— 78% want “fair trade” that ends shipping our jobs overseas.
— 77% want to tax corporations that have moved jobs overseas.
— 77% want universal free pre-kindergarten.
— 74% want all Americans to be able to buy into Medicare-for-All.
— 71% support a massive infrastructure spending program aimed at rebuilding our broken roads and bridges and putting people back to work.
— 70% want free college at all public universities.
— 68% want a guaranteed minimum income.
— 67% want the government to be the employer of last resort to end unemployment (like FDR did).
— 66% want the morbidly rich to pay at least a 50% income tax (currently the average American billionaire pays around 3%).
— 65% want the big banks broken up and a return to local banking.
— 64% want net neutrality so your billion-dollar corporate internet and email providers can’t monitor everything you do online and sell that information.
— 63% want public financing of elections to get billionaire money out of them.
— 60% want the Post Office to offer inexpensive public banking.
President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress got some of the infrastructure work done and tried to end much of America’s nearly $2 trillion in student debt (until they were blocked by Republican lawsuits and six Republicans on the Supreme Court), and a small bit of the “Green New Deal” was incorporated into the Inflation Reduction Act, but otherwise there’s a lot that Americans want and deserve that they’re not getting.
Why? Because the morbidly rich control much of our political process right now, and most of our media.
As former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously said:
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.
This year’s election will not only decide whether we’re going to let Trump or a similar Republican end American democracy; it will also, if enough of us show up, determine if Citizens United can be legislatively overturned and we can purge our political system of the cancer of big money.
Democrats almost did it in 2022: The For the People Act would have reversed significant parts of Citizens United and provided for public funding of and more transparency around elections. It passed the House and got enough votes to pass the Senate under the Constitution.
Even the Republican filibuster could have been overcome if we hadn’t been betrayed by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate. If we do well this in this year’s elections, next year might be much better legislatively.
Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote. The stakes have never been higher.
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European Court: Polish Abortion Verdict Violated Woman's Rights
A Polish rights group representing the patient said the ruling "is a milestone and another argument that Polish law, which causes so much suffering for women in Poland, must change."
Dec 14, 2023
A court in Europe ruled Thursday that a 2020 Constitutional Tribunal judgment further restricting already limited abortion access in Poland violated a pregnant woman's right to respect for private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The applicant, a Warsaw resident identified in court papers as M.L., became pregnant in 2020. After her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, she scheduled an appointment for an abortion at a Polish hospital. However, the Constitutional Tribunal determined that abortions because of fetal abnormalities are unconstitutional, a policy that took effect in January 2021.
Because of that policy change—which remains in effect and means that pregnant people in Poland can only receive abortion care in cases of rape or incest, or if the patient's life is at risk—M.L. could no longer terminate her pregnancy in her country.
"A return to the legal situation before the ruling of the Polish constitutional court is not enough—what is needed is access to legal abortion regardless of the reason."
"In her rapidly deteriorating mental state, M.L. had to organize a trip abroad within a few days, leaving her family and loved ones in Poland," her lawyers said, according to The Guardian. "For an abortion, which only a few days earlier would have been performed for free in a nearby hospital, she had to travel to the Netherlands. She spent more than 5,500 zloty ($1,400)."
The European Court of Human Rights' Thursday decision was 5-2, with judges Krzysztof Wojtyczek of Poland and Péter Paczolay of Hungary dissenting. In its ruling that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights was violated, the ECHR noted that the Polish tribunal included members appointed in a procedure that was found to be in breach of the treaty in a 2021 case.
The ECHR also unanimously declared inadmissible a separate case involving 927 women of childbearing age who argued they were potential victims of a violation of their rights as Polish law forces them to carry pregnancies to term even in the case of fetal abnormality.
Despite that denial, Federa, a Polish rights group that had lawyers representing M.L., celebrated the outcome of her case—which includes over €16,000 ($17,582) in damages—as a sign of broader progress.
"We fought for this decision for every woman living in Poland," Federa said in a statement. "This verdict is a milestone and another argument that Polish law, which causes so much suffering for women in Poland, must change."
"We expect the new Polish government to liberalize abortion law," the group added. "A return to the legal situation before the ruling of the Polish constitutional court is not enough—what is needed is access to legal abortion regardless of the reason."
The tightening of Polish abortion law occurred under the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party that was just ousted from power. Reuters noted Thursday that "Poland's new liberal government has promised to protect women's rights and Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed to present a bill making abortion legal until 12 weeks, although President Andrzej Duda may veto any such law."
Notes From Poland pointed out that "the various parties that make up the new coalition disagree on whether there should also be further liberalization of the law" and in addition to a veto threat from Duda, any policy change could be overturned by the Constitutional Tribunal, "all of whose current judges were appointed under PiS."
Since the "politically compromised" tribunal's 2020 judgment, the Polish government has abused "its powers to chase down alleged abortion-related activity threatens people's rights to privacy, autonomy, and health," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The group's September report shared stories of doctors as well as women and girls harassed by law enforcement.
When that HRW report was released, observers warned that similar crackdowns could occur in the United States, where GOP policymakers in over a dozen states—including Texas—have imposed near-total bans on abortion since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last year.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could limit access to abortion pills nationwide and the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court ruled that Kate Cox could not obtain an abortion in the state despite a lethal fetal diagnosis. Like M.L. in Poland, Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, had to travel to receive abortion care.
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Poland's Right-Wing Nationalist Party Poised for Defeat After Record Voter Turnout
"After eight years of government hatred, authoritarianism is over in Poland," one activist said.
Oct 16, 2023
In what one expert called a "major shift," Polish voters Sunday seemed to have rejected the right-wing party that has governed the country for the past eight years, restricting abortion and LGBTQ rights, turning state television into a propaganda machine, and seeking greater control over the judiciary.
While the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won the most votes of any single party at 36.8%, it did not secure enough to form a majority in parliament, according to an Ipsos exit poll reported by Notes From Poland. Instead, three potential coalition partners—the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) with 31.6% of the vote, the center-right Third Way with 13% of the vote, and The Left with 8.6% of the vote—ended the night in a stronger position to negotiate a government.
"Poland won. Democracy has won. We have removed them from power," KO leader Donald Tusk told supporters Sunday, as The Associated Press reported. "This result might still be better, but already today we can say this is the end of the bad time, this is end of Law and Justice rule."
PiS and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski are allied with Hungry's far-right Viktor Orban and the Trump-supporting faction of the U.S. Republican Party, according to The Washington Post. Since taking office in 2015, the party has moved the country in a more socially conservative and autocratic direction. PiS implemented a near-total ban on abortions, and Kaczynski has described LGBTQ rights as a "threat." It also passed a judicial reform requiring judges to disclose any group affiliations, which European Court of Justice ruled violated E.U. laws governing judicial independence, as AP reported at the time. Furthermore, it converted the state television channel TVP into a party mouthpiece that The New Republic compared to Fox News.
Tusk, for his part, has promised to approve both civil unions and first-trimester abortions, according to The New Republic and The Washington Post.
A looming loss for PiS prompted celebrations from progressive campaigners.
"After eight years of government hatred, authoritarianism is over in Poland," gay Polish activist Bart Staszewski tweeted. "I still can't believe it... The nightmare ends..."
The Warsaw-based Foundation for Women and Family Planning (FEDERA) helped get out the vote ahead of the election, especially urging young women to the polls. The group posted on social media celebrating the record 72.9% turnout.
"Yesterday's incredible electoral mobilization will go down in history," the group wrote.
It also noted that turnout for women was around 73.7%.
"What we shouted with you during protests all over the country has happened: 'Jarek, unfortunately, this government will be overthrown by women!'" the group said, referring to Kaczynski.
"I expect that women will now have more rights, that they will feel safer," one of those women voters, a 43-year old bank administrator named Iga Frackiewicz, told Reuters. But women's rights weren't her only concern.
"I also hope that the nepotism will end," she said, "for example in state companies and in other places."
Environmental campaigner Dominika Lasota put it simply, as AP reported.
"We have our future," Lasota said.
The vote also has important geopolitical implications, The Washington Post pointed out, as PiS has turned away from the E.U. and Tusk has promised to restore Poland's relationship with the bloc. He has also pledged unwavering support to Ukraine after the current government vacillated following strong early backing for the country in its war with Russia.
"What it means for Europe is a major shift," Rosa Balfour, director of the Brussels-based think tank Carnegie Europe, told the Post. "If we get a government without Law and Justice, the relationship between Warsaw and Brussels, which has deteriorated steadily, would change. It also shows that Polish society can make independent decisions even if the media is government controlled."
However, it may take several months for a new government to take shape. Official election results are expected by Tuesday, BBC News explained. At that point, President Andrzej Duda, who was a member of parliament for PiS, is likely to ask PiS to form a government, since the party did receive the largest share of votes. Yet its path to power is unclear. The Polish parliament has 460 seats, meaning a coalition must have at least 231 members to form a majority. PiS has only secured 200, according to Ipsos, and its most likely governing partner, the far-right Confederation, only looks to have secured 11, according to Notes From Poland.
If PiS does not form a government, parliament would have a chance to form one on its own. Since KO, Third Way, and The Left look set to have a combined tally of 248 votes, they have a shot a doing so. If they fail, Duda could name a new potential prime minister, and, if that also fails, he would have to call new elections.
"The three pro-E.U. opposition parties are now the clear favorites to form the next government, but the process might take around two to three months," Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe adviser for consulting firm Teneo, told The Washington Post.
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