ZTwo opposition MPs have started a dispute in Poland about the funding of NGOs that are conspicuously pro-government. For this purpose, Katarzyna Lubnauer and Krystyna Szumilas from the liberal Civic Platform (PO) used the instrument of “MPs control” provided for in the law, with which opposition politicians have repeatedly obtained sensitive documents for the government. According to her account, the Ministry of Education had announced a competition for funding of 40 million złoty (around 8.5 million euros) in 2022.
The funds went to 42 institutions. The “Big Project Poland” foundation received the largest part, with one million euros for the purchase of a state-owned villa in Warsaw. The program advisory board of the foundation includes politicians from the ruling national-conservative PiS, such as Culture Minister Piotr Gliński and MEP Zdzisław Krasnodębski. The contract stipulated that the foundation could do with the villa as it wished after five years, i.e. it could also sell it.
Other events of this kind soon came to light. Two journalists critical of the government wrote on the onet.pl portal that this type of material and institutional security for their own party friends was “the execution of the political testament” of the 73-year-old PiS founder and chairman Jarosław Kaczyński. Parliamentary elections will take place in Poland in autumn; For the first time since 2015, the opposition has a real chance of a change of power.
No educational institutions “in the strict sense”
“Sooner or later, the right will lose power and the new team will cut off all PiS-affiliated people from institutions and (state) companies, where today they lead a life of luxury at the expense of taxpayers,” the journalists wrote. What is also striking about the events relating to the “funding of infrastructural development” of educational institutions was that not all future beneficiaries of the funding are educational institutions in the narrower sense and some of them have a very poor record of their previous activities. In addition, many of these “projects” are being funded even though the selection committee had given them a negative appraisal, which the ultra-conservative Minister of Education Przemysław Czarnek apparently ignored.
On Monday, the newspaper “Rzeczpospolita” published further findings. Accordingly, Gliński’s Ministry of Culture also developed similar activities. Last year, 52 institutions received 20 million złoty (about 4.2 million euros) from the ministry. Beneficiaries included a foundation called Muza Dei (God’s Muse) and controversial right-wing activist Robert Bąkiewicz’s Association March of Independence, which organizes the annual parade celebrating independence in 1918. Bąkiewicz is courted and “involved” by the ruling PiS and, according to observers, is supposed to snatch supporters from other right-wing groups.
Minister Czarnek reacted angrily to the media reports about the events. He would not give anything to “ultra-left” organizations that had been funded “for years” because that was “unconstitutional”. Czarnek pointed out that years ago a previous government had handed over the Silesian moated castle in Wohnwitz (Wojnowice) as its seat and property to the East European College (KEW), an institution of East European researchers. There are liberal politicians in the committees. However, critics soon unmasked Czarnek’s statement as misleading: Politicians sit on the board of trustees of the college by virtue of their office, including representatives of the state president, the foreign ministry and the region of Lower Silesia.
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