2023 Polish protests
People marching through the streets of Warsaw as part of the protests held on 4 June 2023.
DateJune 4, 2023 – October 1, 2023
Location
Warsaw and other areas of Poland[1]
Caused byDemocratic backsliding
GoalsDemocratization
Parties
Lead figures
Number

June 4:
Nationwide: 1,000,000+ protestors[12]
Warsaw: 500,000+ protestors[2][13]

June 16:
Poznań: 50,000+ protestors[14]

June 24:
Wrocław: 50,000+ protestors[15]

On June 4, 2023, a series of anti-government protests took place in several areas of Poland, with the main one being held in the capital city of Warsaw. The protests were sparked by the passing of the bill commonly referred to as "Lex Tusk", which critics argued would disrupt the constitutional separation of powers by giving the ruling party of PiS excessive judicial oversight. The Polish opposition in the national Parliament, as well as numerous foreign commentators, considered the law's approval an extension of the perceived constitutional crisis under the presidency of Andrzej Duda and the government headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

On 1 October 2023, the "March of a Million Hearts" took place in Warsaw.

Causes

Since at least 2015, the Polish government headed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party has been accused of facilitating democratic backsliding, specifically within the realm of judicial independence.[2][16][17] The party has been accused of curtailing the independence of the judiciary, eliminating the separation of powers, and exercising undue influence over the courts.[2][16][17] This culminated in December 2017, when the European Commission triggered Article 7 in relation to the perceived risk to the rule of law in Poland.[18]

The common pattern of all these legislative changes is that the executive or legislative powers are now set up in such a way that the ruling majority can systematically, politically interfere with the composition, the powers, the administration and the functioning of these authorities, thereby rendering the independence of the judiciary completely moot.[18]

— Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of the European Commission

While the cabinets led by Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki received popular support among conservatives and the national Catholic Church[1][17] and steadily increased social benefits,[2][16][17] worries have been raised over the government's increasingly aggressive campaigns against minorities (most notably the LGBTQ+ community),[16][17] reproductive rights,[2][16][17] immigration[19] and EU institutions.[2][17][19] The perceived erosion of academic freedom in the area of Holocaust research and media liberties, as well as the rising inflation, were also widely seen as reasons of concern.[2][20]

Lex Tusk

On 29 May 2023, President of Poland Andrzej Duda announced that he would sign a bill which would establish an investigative panel into whether the liberal party Civic Platform, which was leading the opposition in the national Parliament at the time, had allowed the country to be influenced by Russia under the cabinets of Donald Tusk and Ewa Kopacz from 2007 to 2015, thus making Poland dependent on Russian oil and natural gas.[3][4][21] The bill, which was published on the Journal of Laws the following day,[22] would allow the Parliament to create a 10-member commission, whose head would be directly selected by Prime Minister Morawiecki,[23] that would deliver an initial report on 17 September 2023, ahead of the parliamentary election that was set to be held later in the year;[17][22][24] the panel would also be allowed to ban any political figures found to have subjected Poland to Russian influence from holding most official public duties for ten years.[3][4][22]

Both Duda and the Law and Justice party, which supported the bill's passage, were accused by critics and opposition parties of designing the legislation with the specific goal of targeting opponents and removing them from public life,[2][17][4] as well as harming support for Civic Platform's leader, former Prime Minister Tusk: for this reason, the law was nicknamed the "Lex Tusk", or the "Tusk Law".[17][3][22] Some critics compared the law's goals to the political rhetoric that was originally spread by US Senator Joseph McCarthy during the late 1940s and the 1950s.[2][25] The "Lex Tusk" also drew criticism from the European Union, through official statements by Věra Jourová[26] and Didier Reynders,[20][27] and the United States, with US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller filing an official announcement.[22][27]

On 2 June 2023, Duda announced that he sent an urgent amendment containing several proposed revisions of the bill to the Polish Parliament, encouraging lawmakers to "act swiftly" and stating that he was reacting to the public outrage surrounding the law's initial passage.[24][28] According to the Polish president, the proposed amendments would ensure that the law was subject to non-partisan review, that no parliamentary members would be allowed to be part of the commission, and that none of the politicians who would face charges as a result of the investigation could be banned from public office.[24][28]

Protests

June 4 protests

On 4 June 2023, former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, together with several other members of the Civic Platform party, organized a series of anti-government protests in Warsaw, Poland's capital city:[16][29] people from all around the country joined the demonstration,[2][16][30] while crowds also gathered in Kraków, Szczecin, Poznań and other Polish cities.[1][2][30] The protests in Warsaw were notably attended by former President and Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa,[16][29][31] incumbent mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski,[2][16] social activist Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram[16][29] and New Left leader Włodzimierz Czarzasty, among others.[29] Despite having maintained a more cautious approach in the weeks preceding the event,[17] many other opposition groupings, with the exception of far-right party Confederation,[29] eventually sent their respective representatives to Warsaw,[16][17][29] in response to the approval of the "Lex Tusk".[17]

Although there was no official confirmation of the size of the rally, the estimated amount of participants in the protests in Warsaw ranged from 300,000 people, according to Polish web portal Onet,[2][32] to 500,000 people, according to estimates by the city hall and Tusk himself.[2][16][29] The march was symbolically convened to mark the 34th anniversary of the semi-free elections held in 1989, which have widely been seen as the catalyst for the fall of the Communist regime and a peaceful transition to parliamentarian democracy in Poland.[16][17]

March of a Million Hearts

On 1 October 2023, a second wave of protests took place throughout the country, and primarily in the city of Warsaw, which was visited by former Prime Minister and protest leader Donald Tusk. The organizers put the attendance at at least a few hundred thousand, the Warsaw city hall at 1 million, and the police at over 100,000.

Reactions

The protests have been called a Polish version of the Euromaidan, by both pro and anti-government media.[33][34][35][36]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Poland protest: Hundreds of thousands demand change in Warsaw". BBC News. 4 June 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Gera, Vanessa (4 June 2023). "Hundreds of thousands march in Poland anti-government protests to show support for democracy". Associated Press. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Polish president signs 'Tusk Law' on undue Russian influence". Reuters. Warsaw. 29 May 2023. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Scislowska, Monika (29 May 2023). "Poland's president approves law on Russia's influence that could target opposition". Associated Press. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  5. ↑ "Ujawniamy; Kaczyńskiego schowali do tunelu żeby protesty nie zakłócały mu ględzenia". Retrieved 13 July 2023.
  6. ↑ "Ruch KOD". 4 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  7. ↑ "WAŻNE PRZESŁANIE Wandy Traczyk Stawskiej na marszu 4 czerwca!". Retrieved 31 July 2023.
  8. ↑ "MARSZ 4 CZERWCA - komentuje Roman Giertych. NA ŻYWO!". Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  9. ↑ "Liga Polskich Rodzin". Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  10. ↑ "Marsz 4 czerwca – najnowsze informacje". TVN24. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  11. ↑ "Actor says he was paid to appear as "passer-by" on Polish state TV criticising anti-government protest". Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  12. ↑ "Nie tylko Warszawa. Setki tysięcy ludzi na ulicach w całym kraju przeciw PiS". 4 June 2023. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  13. ↑ "Half a million march in Warsaw against Poland's ruling party". Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  14. ↑ "KILKADZIESIĄT TYSIĘCY LUDZI NA MARSZU PRZECIW PIS W POZNANIU". 17 June 2023. Retrieved 17 June 2023.
  15. ↑ "OPOZYCJA DEMOKRATYCZNA WYGRA TE WYBORY. WIEC WE WROCŁAWIU PRZYPIECZĘTOWAŁ KLĘSKĘ PIS". 25 June 2023. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Walker, Shaun (4 June 2023). "Poland: hundreds of thousands march against rightwing populist government". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 "La grande manifestazione contro il governo polacco a Varsavia". Il Post (in Italian). 4 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  18. 1 2 Timmermans, Frans (20 December 2017). Opening remarks of First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, Readout of the European Commission discussion on the Rule of Law in Poland (Speech). Brussels, Belgium. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  19. 1 2 "Tusk w Poznaniu: Boli was ta PiS-owska gemela". Polsat News (in Polish). 16 June 2023. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  20. 1 2 Murphy, Matt (30 May 2023). "Polish probe into 'Russian influence' angers EU". BBC News. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  21. ↑ "Komisja ds. badania wpływów rosyjskich. Prezydent zdecydował". Polsat News (in Polish). 29 May 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 ""Lex Tusk". Ustawę opublikowano ustawę w Dzienniku Ustaw". Polsat News (in Polish). 30 May 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  23. ↑ Cienski, Jan (27 May 2023). "Polish opposition denounces new commission to probe Russian influence". Politico. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  24. 1 2 3 Scislowska, Monika (2 June 2023). "Poland's president proposes urgent amendments to law on Russian influence". Associated Press. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  25. ↑ Kosicki, Piotr H. (5 June 2023). "Poland Is Not Ready to Accept a New McCarthyism". The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  26. ↑ Sorgi, Gregorio (30 May 2023). "EU blasts Poland over Russian interference law". Politico. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  27. 1 2 Casert, Raf (30 May 2023). "US and EU criticize Polish plans for law that could keep opposition from holding office". Associated Press. Warsaw, Poland. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  28. 1 2 "Duda: Mówię "sprawdzam" rządowi i opozycji. "Przygotowałem nowelizację"". Polsat News (in Polish). 2 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  29. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Marsz 4 czerwca w Warszawie. Tusk: Rządzą nami ponurzy faceci z kompleksami". Polsat News (in Polish). 4 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  30. 1 2 "Tysiące ludzi na ulicach polskich miast. Imponujące zdjęcia z Krakowa". Onet (in Polish). 4 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  31. ↑ "Tłum przerwał wystąpienie Wałęsy. "Jak nie chcecie słuchać, to dziękuję bardzo"". Polsat News (in Polish). 4 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  32. ↑ "Imponująca frekwencja na wielkim marszu 4 czerwca. Policzyliśmy, ile mogło być osób". Onet (in Polish). 4 June 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  33. ↑ ""Mam nadzieję, że nie będzie czołgów na ulicach". Wizje Tomasza Lisa". dorzeczy.pl. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  34. ↑ "Andrzej Szeptycki. Co łączy ukraiński Majdan z marszem 4 czerwca?". Rzeczpospolita (in Polish). Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  35. ↑ "Karnkowski: Niebezpieczny temat". www.tvp.info (in Polish). 2023-05-19. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  36. ↑ "Majdan to był pokojowy bunt narodu przeciwko dyktaturze". Onet Wiadomości (in Polish). 2022-02-22. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
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