The lower chamber of Poland's parliament narrowly voted 228 to 216 late on August 11 to approve a controversial media bill that risks undermining the nation's relationship using the United States and additional antagonising europe.
While Poland's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has stated the law – which prevents companies externally the ecu Economic Area holding more than a 49 percent stake in Polish tv and radio stations – will protect all broadcasters from takeovers by companies located in hostile foreign powers for example China and Russia, opponents say it is an make an effort to push US company Discovery to market the country’s biggest TV network, TVN, whose news channel TVN 24 is usually critical from the PiS-led government.
The law has been dubbed “Lex TVN” by opposition lawmakers, who state that the new rules would see TVN lose its broadcast licenses.
“We do not have any intentions regarding a specific TV channel, it is just about tightening the regulations, so that there is no situation in which companies externally the European Union would buy media in Poland,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference on August 12.
Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators warned the Polish government against the adoption of the law, stating that it threatens “a major US investor within the country”, without mentioning Discovery by name.
They were joined late on August 11 by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who declared that Washington was “deeply troubled” by passage from the bill.
“Large US commercial investments in Poland tie our prosperity together and enhance our collective security,” said Blinken in a statement. “This draft legislation threatens media freedom and could undermine Poland's strong investment climate.”
Discovery – the biggest US investor in Poland – called the bill “an attack on core democratic principles of freedom of speech, the independence from the media and it is directly discriminatory against TVN and Discovery”.
TVN's own management board warned that “the outcome of the vote ought to be of great concern to any enterprise purchasing Poland”.
The law can also be deeply unpopular with many Poles, and thousands of people demonstrated against in cities across the country on August 10.
Parliamentary chaos
Passage of the bill on August 11 was itself highly controversial.
Parliament was initially adjourned until September following a motion submitted, and won, through the opposition.
After consultation between PiS leaders and unnamed constitutional experts however, the end result ended up being annulled by parliament's speaker Elzbieta Witek who ordered another vote on the motion, subsequently won after three Kukiz'15 party MPs – who claimed they'd mistakenly voted towards the adjournment first time round – switched sides.
The speaker then made a decision to ignore the earlier vote the government had lost.
The bill will visit the Senate, the upper house of parliament, which is controlled by Poland's opposition.
It is therefore likely to be rejected and returned to the lower house, where it'll need a complete majority – half of all MPs must vote for it – before it can be delivered to President Andrzej Duda for promulgation.
PiS will again need the support of Kukiz'15, having earlier this week decided to fire Deputy Pm Jaroslaw Gowin, the leader of Agreement, one of its two junior coalition partners.
Gowin has for some time been increasingly at odds with PiS, and it is in opposition to Lex TVN along with the government's flagship economic package, the Polish Deal.
Without Gowin's 13 MPs, PiS has lost its wafer-thin parliamentary majority, which stood at 235 from 460 seats. Kukiz'15 has just four seats, and therefore final passage of the bill is as simple as no means certain.
Property restitution
Although it received much less media attention, Poland’s parliament also on August 11 passed legislation that will stop most legal claims for properties confiscated at the end of World War II.
The new law states that administrative decisions can't be challenged in court after the expiration of the 30-year period – essentially preventing Holocaust survivors from recovering property seized by Poland’s communist-era authorities.
Israel and the US have reached the entire process of formulating some pot reaction to the legislation.
Immediately after the leglisation was passed, however, Blinken jumped the gun and called for an extensive law for resolving confiscated property claims, to supply a degree of of justice for victims.
“Such legislation would benefit many Polish citizens, as well as people who were forced to leave Poland during and after The second world war and who subsequently became naturalised citizens of other countries,” he said.
“Until this type of law is enacted, the pathway to compensation should not be closed for new claims or those pending decisions in administrative courts.”
Mickey Levy meanwhile, the speaker of Israel's parliament, the Knesset, described what the law states as “daylight robbery that desecrates the memory from the Holocaust.”