Poland can benefit from the anti crisis package presented today in Brussels. Money for road construction, environment, enterprise development will start flowing faster writes Gazeta Wyborcza.
Press reviewed by Agnieszka Bielawska.
The paper adds that when ‘Old Europe’ livens up it will start buying more from Poland. Gazeta Wyborcza underlines that instead of the expected 1.3 billion euro pre-payement Poland can get 2.6 billion on condition that the central budget will immediately distribute the money among the interested parties. Gazeta Wyborcza quotes Danuta Hubner, the EU Commissioner for regional Policies: ‘Poland is not starting from scratch, many investment projects are ready , waiting for the money, so the sooner the better.’
The Internal Security Agency ABW accuses Georgia, headlines Dziennik. The Agency considers that the shots fired close to the convoy with Polish and Georgian presidents near the border with south Ossetia on Sunday were a Georgian provocation. What confirms the thesis? asks the paper. The Agency services argue that the moment where the first series of shots was heard, the Georgian guards did not react. The ABW underlines that the bus carrying journalists had been deliberately let through at the head of the cavalcade to allow for the filming of the whole incident. In a confidential report, the Agency writes that the incident played into the hands of the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who wanted to divert attention from internal problems on the day of the anniversary of the ‘Rose Revolution.’
The Donald Tusk government, together with Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to turn the dying libraries into cultural centers answering the challenges of the 21st century. ‘Borrowing books in a library is not enough’, says Poland’s Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza. ‘What we need is libraries as centers of cultural life, with all multimedia facilities available’. Librarians from small localities are panicking, writes the paper, fearing that their competences will fail when confronted with new responsibilities; however, the modernisation also includes special trainings. 90 million dollars offered by the Polish American Freedom Foundation and the Foundation of Bill and Melinda Gates enrich the Culture Ministry funds.
Dziennik comments the latest report of the National Institute of Health and Hygiene concerning alcohol consumption. Polish penchant for drinking is a myth, writes the daily. According to the report Poland places fourth... from the bottom on the list of alcohol consumers in the EU. An average Pole drinks some 6.7 liters of spirit annually, which is three quarters of the average European consumption and only half of what European record breakers, Luxembourgians, drink. Poles drink more beer and wine than vodka and research shows that only 14% of adult Poles drink more than once a week.