What does the global financial crisis mean for Poland? What, actually, is happening in Poland? – writes the Polish version of Newsweek.

Weeklies reviewed by Krystyna Kolosowska.

Is Poland’s situation as good and safe as the prime minister and the finance minister say? Or as bad as the president would have it? Newsweek believes the situation is neither as good nor as bad. Poland is not facing a crisis but it has to be prepared for a major economic slowdown. And, according to Newsweek, it will be harsher than the government expects. It will cause a rise in unemployment and force the government to revise next year’s budget draft. The weekly lists worrying signals. For example in the raw materials sector upward trends can be seen only as regards coal. The crisis on the oil, copper, zinc, lead and silver markets is a bad forecast for Polish companies. Firms building roads and industrial facilities are still doing fine but troubles experienced by developers and weaker investment drive of firms spell a slowdown. Poland’s foreign trade turnover is still rising, but the pace of the rise is slower by half compared with spring . Newsweek writes in conclusion that the current crisis started from banks and Poland is benefitting from its backwardness in this sector. Poles are not as heavily indebted as Americans or the British people. The Polish financial system is not as developed as in the United States or in Western Europe. Therefore, the crisis raging on now is expected to hit Poland less painfully than other countries.

“Justice, not revenge” – says the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny commenting on the trial of Poland’s last communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski and other authors of the 1981 martial law. The fact that it started almost twenty years after Poland regained independence shows the Polish justice system is not coping with squaring accounts with communist-era criminals. The weekly goes on to say that the introduction of martial law, in a clamp down on the free Solidarity trade union, was a violation of fundamental rights of millions of Polish citizens – human rights which even communist Poland pledged to observe as a signatory of international agreements. Doubts as to whether people like Jaruzelski should be prosecuted are dispelled by the fact that their “soldiers” have been prosecuted and brought to account for a dozen of years now. If no attempt was made to bring to responsibility those who gave orders, one might say that small fry were being prosecuted while big fish were let free. The trial of Jaruzelski and other martial law authors shows also that it was not some anonymous system that violated human rights in Poland but concrete people.

Wprost reports that Warsaw is among Europe’s most heavily congested capital cities. According to the British traffic information website KeepMoving  the average speed at which cars move in Warsaw is slightly over 25 km per hour. The pace is slower only in London and Berlin, out of Europe’s thirty biggest cities. During the past four years the number of cars in Poland has risen by 4 million while plans to build new roads and by-passes have not materialized. Three years ago the government considered the introduction of fees for driving in the city centre but no city has yet decided to realize this plan in fear of violent protests. In Warsaw, 67 percent of drivers were against it and only 26 percent were for – according to a study conducted by experts from the Warsaw University of Technology. An integrated system of traffic management is in place in Warsaw but it is hardly functioning. And to make matters worse – the driving habits of Poles, like entering crossroads when they know they will not be able to leave them before the lights change, contribute to traffic jams, writes Wprost.

Przekroj talks to Tomasz Szypula from the Campaign against Homophobia about a rally of homosexual families, which is to be held in Warsaw later this month. This will not be a forum calling for the right to adopt children by homosexual couples, says Szypula. We have in mind biological parents who have children from their previous heterosexual unions. Almost three percent of gays and lesbians in Poland declare that they are bringing up a child. The rally is expected to bring together some 50 to 100 persons. Szypula says it is high time to talk about their problems. 

A genuine construction rush can be observed in the Polish countryside, writes the weekly Polityka.  In 2007 over 100 thousand new houses were built right in the fields. This is almost twice as many as two years ago. Almost all their owners have a mortgage to pay back. This year Poles are expected to borrow some 68 billion zlotys, or almost 26 billion US dollars, from banks to finance their investments. It looks like the American financial crisis has hardly scared them. Karol Piwko, a fan of the Kielce province, which used to symbolize a backwater in Poland, likes to tour villages to see how the countryside is getting more and more beautiful. He often drives along a new, modern street, which barely four years ago was a nameless access path to fields. It received a name when new houses began to mushroom in the fields – houses with elegant fences and stylish roofed gates. According to the man the village of Wola Szczygiełkowa made the biggest progress with plasma television sets and lawn mowers in every household. Demand for the latter is so big in the area that in a town with 3 thousand inhabitants lawn mowers are offered by three shops. That was Polityka.