Political parties in Poland

Jacek Karnowski, currently mayor of Sopot on Poland's Baltic Sea coast, was monitored by state surveillance in 2018-2019 when he was one of the key politicians promoting an opposition alliance to win the Senate elections, according to Friday's daily Gazeta Wyborcza. (The united opposition did win the Senate in 2019).

Yet even if it wanted to cut a deal with the EU, PiS is caught between a rock and hard place with its junior coalition partner, the party of Zbigniew Ziobro. The hardline justice minister won't agree to any compromises with Brussels, but dropping him from the coalition would result in a minority government, which is definitely not an ideal situation in an election year.

"The poor state of the Polish education system is the effect of actions by all governments in power since 1989," Martynowicz tells BIRN.

"But my decision to leave the state system is caused to a large extent by what happened in the [seven] years since [Law and Justice] PiS came to power," he says.

To get the law through, the ruling Law and Justice {PiS} even rejected some amendments proposed by MPs from the party of hardline Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. On Wednesday night, it seemed the Justice Ministers' crowd was ready to let this one go in the name of, as they said, "a far-reaching compromise".

So far, Ziobro has opposed any compromise with Brussels, but the new scenario discussed this week is that his party would submit amendments to a presidential draft law to dismantle the Chamber, which PiS would later accept.

Tusk's announcement is important because it means the liberal opposition has received support from maverick politician Pawel Kukiz, whose four MPs are currently key to PiS maintaining its parliamentary majority. To support the opposition request, Kukiz has asked for the commission to have a broader remit, investigating surveillance under several governments, including Civic Platform ones.

More than 100,000 people demonstrated in Poland today in support of the country's membership in the European Union, Reuters reported.

This came after the Polish Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that parts of European law were incompatible with the national constitution - something that raised fears that Poland might leave the bloc.

The centre-right European People's Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament, sounded the alarm on Thursday (7 October), warning that Poland's ruling party is pushing the country towards 'Polexit'.

Price of bread

Andrzej Pietrasik, Plonsk's mayor, welcomed Tusk in the traditional Polish way with some bread - a staple that has been in headlines recently when Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister and an economist, failed to know the price of a supermarket loaf.

Gowin, go lose

On the eve of the adoption of the most controversial act of the current Sejm (elected in 2019 for the term until 2023), Poland's three-party coalition broke apart.