How will the collapse of the Czech government affect the EU rotating presidency? Will Poland manage to score any international top jobs which are up for grabs this year? And an interview with the daughter of the Polish Fritzl - all that and more in today’s press review presented by Danuta Isler.
Many Polish papers devote their front page coverage today to the collapse of the Czech government after it lost a non-confidence vote in parliament late Tuesday. “Topolanek has fallen, the Union is left without the head” writes Gazeta Wyborcza publishing commentaries on the possible consequences of such a move in the country which is currently holding the EU rotating presidency. “This is an unfortunate situation but there is no need to panic,” says Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, who heads the European Parliament’s Foreign Committee in Rzeczpospolita daily. “This is a blow to our presidency,” says Libor Rouczek, a Czech deputy head of the same committee in Dziennik daily.
“No top jobs for Poles?” asks Rzeczpospolita reporting that Donald Tusk government may suffer a defeat in its fight for all the international posts that Poles have aspired to head. Several important seats in international structures are up for grabs for Poles this year including EU president, head of the European Commission, EU Foreign Ministers, and NATO Secretary General. It would be a great success if Poland were to receive these posts – say commentators in the daily stressing that more efforts and lobbying is needed on part of the ruling Civic Platform.
Dziennik writes about a row between Health Minister Ewa Kopacz and Labour Minister Jolanta Fedak concerning a list of obligatory medical tests for Polish women. According to the daily, minister of labor Jolanta Fedak is against the idea of introducing new provisions to the labour code concerning obligatory cervical pap smears and mammogram tests for prospective employees. Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, however, wants the two medical tests to be included in a new list of obligatory examinations required by the employers. “The Labour Code is not the place to conduct health prevention, but to regulate relations between employers and employees,” says minister Fedak in the daily.
"British unionists to Poles: go back home!" - is the title of a story published in Gazeta Wyborcza about protests in the British town, Isle of Grain, located 80 km from London. The violent protest broke out after it had been revealed that an English welder from the Grain Power Station earns on average 14 pounds an hour, while his Polish counterpart – only 10. The British unionists were afraid that it was more profitable for the company to employ Poles and thus they might be made redundant. The story is accompanied by photographs presenting workers with banners “We fight for jobs” and “Who will pay your taxes if we are unemployed?”
Tabloid Fakt publishes an interview with Alicja Bartoszuk, 22-year-old daughter of the Polish Fritzl who was raped by her father and bore two children who were put up for adoption. In the first interview with Polish media since her father’s court case started last week she explains why she decided to go ahead and appear in a documentary produced for one of Polish commercial TV stations explaining her life ordeal including her own mother telling her to do everything possible to miscarry throughout. “This is a film about dignity,” she says in the tabloid explaining that she wants to do all she can to regain the self-respect she lost because of her parents.