Page 16 - bne_newspaper_May_24_2019

Central Europe
May 24, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
European election
in Poland a warm-up ahead of national vote
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
Less than a third of the Polish voters will likely decide on May 26 who will represent them in the European Parliament in the next five years. That is a strikingly low turnout for an election that might trigger deep- running changes in Poland for years to come.
Polish political parties have been doing their utmost to rally voters for the Sunday vote in hope that a good result – low turnout or not, it is the fi- nal percentage of the scooped votes that will mat- ter – will set off a wave on which they will ride to a victorious night this autumn, when the national election takes place.
For the ruling Law and Justice (PiS), a victory on Sunday will reaffirm its domination on Poland’s political scene and give the party a new momen- tum it urgently needs after somewhat clueless weeks in the run-up to the vote.
PiS’ began the campaign by stunning opposition with a multi-billion fiscal stimulus, including
PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski campaigning in Lublin ahead of the European Parliament election.
a new unconditional benefit for children and a one-off extra pension for the elderly.
But the ruling party has clearly struggled to contain recent problems that hit it more or less directly.
Perhaps the biggest issue has been their awkward sticking to defending the Polish Catholic Church after a documentary film exposed several rank and file priests as guilty of sexual abuse of children.
A number of high-ranked members of the Episco- pate have also had to parry accusations of cover- ing up paedophilia in their dioceses.
“He who raises his hand against the Church, raises it against Poland,” PiS’ chairman Jaroslaw Kaczyn- ski said shortly before the film’s release in what was perhaps the most ill-timed remark of the campaign.
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Czech banks to invest billions of crowns into capital of National Development Fund
The Czech government and the largest banks in the country agreed on May 20 to set up the Na- tional Development Fund, which will invest into long-term projects of public interest.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said that the biggest banks could pay about CZK6bn (€232.9mn) into the fund next year, daily iDnes.
cz reported. This was confirmed by a survey of the largest Czech banks, carried out by the Czech News Agency, which showed they are ready to invest billions of crowns into the capital of the National Development Fund.
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