Government of Poland

Main article: Poland

Foreign policy

Main article: Polish Foreign Policy

2023

Donald Tusk named prime minister

In December 2023, Donald Tusk was appointed prime minister of Poland, marking the beginning of a delayed transfer of power to the country's pro-remain parties, EU nearly two months after they won a surprise election victory.

Tusk's return to power after eight years of nationalist rule - looks unusual in the EU, where right-wing politicians are once again gaining ground, from the Netherlands to Viktor Orban's Hungary. Tusk takes office amid worsening relations with neighboring Ukraine and inherits a budget that has little room to fulfill election spending promises.

Arrest of Deputy Foreign Minister Vavzhik for corruption in the issuance of Schengen visas

In early September 2023, it became known about the dismissal of Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Petr Wawrzyk, but in fact it turned out that the official was arrested for visa corruption.

Officially, the reason was the "lack of satisfactory cooperation." However, information spread in the press that it was Vavzhik who oversaw the bill to increase the issuance of work visas to migrants, mainly from Asian countries, which PiS had to quickly recall so that the party would not be washed away by a wave of anger of Polish citizens.

According to the investigation, Vavzhik oversaw the consular departments and seemed to put pressure on them, demanding an increase in the number of visas issued under the pretext of a shortage of labor. Including fraud was carried out through the visa center in Lodz, which was inaugurated in April this year.

The essence of the scam was to issue many work visas for people who had not worked a day in Poland. Such actions should be suppressed, but, as you can guess, no one was involved in tracking such stories.

After the disclosure of this information, there was evidence that the ex-official allegedly tried to commit suicide, and then an article was massively circulated in the left-wing media stating that Poland issues the most work visas in the entire European Union.

As if by chance, the city of Lodz was also mentioned there. In it, the border service recently conducted an audit of a large employment agency led by a 40-year-old Georgian. In the course of it, it turned out that since mid-2022, a man registered 1647 applications for assignments to foreigners with the employment bureau, only none of them eventually got a job.

At the same time, details of the scandal began to appear, which the competitors of the ruling party began to use with might and main. Journalists of the opposition portal Onet said that the Americans gave a tip to Wawjik, since he created a channel for the illegal transfer of migrants from Asia and Africa through Europe to the United States.

When issuing Polish labor visas, the foreign ministry used the resource of the outsourcing structure, which VFS Global belongs to the American fund. Blackstone VFS Global has several contracts with Polish diplomatic missions to maintain the visa system.

The prosecutor later announced that seven people were charged on suspicion of involvement in corruption related to the issuance of Polish visas, three of them were placed in custody. Moreover, it is argued that among them there are no persons who "held senior positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." According to the prosecutor, the violations, which were found by about a hundred, were identified in Polish consular missions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the UAE, India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the Philippines and Qatar, but not in any African countries, contrary to media reports.

At the same time, the opposition announced that we are talking about 250 thousand visas that were issued for two and a half years. Up to 40 thousand dollars were taken for one visa, which were shared by smugglers and officials. Even the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry (and a member of the PiS party) Zbigniew Rau was involved in the scandal, under the pretext that without his patronage such schemes could not be carried out. Remembering similar scandals with Ukrainian grain, in which persons close to the ruling party were also involved, the Rybar channel noted the assumption logically.

But Rau pointed out that "there is no scandal," and the violations concerned the issuance of about 200 documents. According to Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel Yablonsky, the case concerns 46 work visas issued in 2022, and only about 1000 suspicious cases are checked.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, in turn, said that at least "part of the information" that appeared in the media is not true, and called for objectivity in covering the investigation.

MEP, former Prime Minister Poland Leszek Miller said behind-the-scenes talks had begun to suspend visas issued by Polish consular departments. According to him, " Schengen zone loses confidence in Poland" and the visas issued by it. He pointed out that the worst-case scenario provides for an option in which Poles To Europe will again need documents to cross borders.

So far, PiS is trying to defend itself, claiming that the opposition is fanning the scandal and actively taking advantage of the situation. The leader of the opposition party "Civic Platform" Donald Tusk released videos about the "visa scam." They have "evidence of the Law and Justice Party's actions as a smuggling mafia."

The head of another party, Poland 2050, Shimon Holovnya, demands an audit by the Foreign Ministry's Internal Security Agency. It requires a complete list of people who were issued work visas, as well as establish that none of these guest workers pose a threat to the security of Poland and the European Union as a whole.

Reputationally, this scandal will have a rather unpleasant effect on the ruling PiS party: this is not the first incident related to its migration policy. The main catch in the rhetoric of the ruling party is due to the fact that it has already spent billions of zloty on the construction of fences on its borders, while in order to get into the EU, you just had to pay not to courier Ukrainians, but directly to officials.

Polish President bans former state security officers from working in government agencies

In mid-June 2023, President Poland Andrzej Duda state banned former security officials of the Polish People's Republic from serving. More. here