EU climate pact concessions to Poland would be a “phenomenal success”, says head of diplomacy Radosław Sikorski.
Press review Elzbieta Krajewska
DZIENNIK considers the Brussels climate summit, where both the Polish president and prime minister will be present. The two are flying separately, the president in the official government plane, and the premier is taking a charter. The daily reports that today Prime Minister Donald Tusk is discussing the climate package at the session of the Council of Europe. “Yesterday, the Polish position was clear, to hold on to our main postulates on CO2 emission,” writes DZIENNIK but adds a quote from Foreign Minister Sikorski, who has guarded optimism about the hoped-for compromise, saying that it would be a “phenomenal success” if this happened today or tomorrow.
On the same subject, GAZETA WYBORCZA writes of the “breakthrough” project of a European energy solidarity fund prepared by Poland and Germany, where instead of CO2 emission quotas, new EU members would receive substantial funds for modernising the economy. It would be better for this country than the French proposal – the paper cites the opinion of one of the Polish negotiators.
The same paper frontpages the bad news that the Polish economy is slowing down – this is evident in the falling demand for electric power, for the first time in years. Business is using less – because of production cutdowns, which in turn are caused by smaller contracts. Steelworks, foundries, car manufacturers – all of these are shutting down equipment and laying off workers. In the past years, writes GAZETA WYBORCZA, the demand for power grew by 2-3% annually but this November it fell by 5% in comparison to 2007. There is some good news with all this: the dropping demand means that there is more time to build new infrastructure, as if Poland had continued to devour power at this rate, by 2016 Polish power plants would just have collapsed.
Over to RZECZPOSPOLITA which reports on the chaos in Greece, writing that a Polish man was among those detained in the course of the demonstrations in Athens. The daily prints pictures of a burning car and demonstrators clashing with riot police. Poles living in Greece say that they have never seen the like of the street violence. “Martial law in Poland was nothing in comparison” says one shocked man, quoted by the daily.
And still with RZECZPOSPOLITA which runs a pre-Christmas probe to find out how Poles will be sending their seasonal greetings. Half will be talking to their nearest and dearest on the phone, 44% will send a card and 30% a Christmas text message. 23% will make a personal visit, 14% will send an email and 10% intended to use an internet communicator. 9% claimed they would have everyone at home over Christmas… and there was 1% who said that they would be sending a telegram.