Poland

Why is the EU attacking Poland and Hungary in a crisis?

11 March 2022 11:30 pm

With Russian bombs harassing Kiev and Kharkiv, the two unsung heroes of Europe have been Poland and Hungary. With very…

The myopic focus on racism at the Polish-Ukrainian border

5 March 2022 9:50 pm

There are already a hell of a lot of foreign correspondents and human-rights workers at the Ukrainian-Polish border – an…

Are Poles really against immigrants?

3 March 2022 3:25 am

Krakow The invasion of Ukraine is being felt across Europe. Already hundreds of thousands of displaced Ukrainians are spilling out…

The crisis in Ukraine is strengthening the EU

3 March 2022 12:30 am

The EU has a knack for turning a crisis into an opportunity. The Eurozone crisis led to the centralisation of…

The EU is pushing Hungary and Poland to the brink

17 February 2022 4:15 am

Storm clouds looming over the EU’s ‘rule of law’ dispute turned a shade darker on Wednesday. The European Court of…

Poland’s abortion culture war is a battle for the country’s soul

12 December 2021 7:30 pm

This week it emerged that a hospital in the city of Białystok in Poland refused to grant an abortion to…

The EU doesn’t understand Hungary and Poland

18 November 2021 10:00 pm

Rather like Germany with its ill-starred ‘Drive to the East’ in the 19th and 20th centuries, one suspects the EU…

How the EU hardened its heart towards refugees

17 November 2021 9:27 pm

‘They wanted me to fight, and I knew I had toleave, or die.’ My translator, a former English teacher from…

Lukashenko and Putin are exploiting Europe’s migration muddle

12 November 2021 7:11 pm

At the border of Belarus and Poland, camps of migrants wait for a chance to cross the border into the…

How Turkey is fuelling the Belarus-Poland migrant crisis

11 November 2021 5:35 am

In the cold, damp forest lining the border between Poland and Belarus, thousands of refugees flown over from the Middle…

Poland’s Belarusian border conflict is becoming violent

10 November 2021 1:59 am

The EU’s conflict with Belarus is heating up. The simmering migrant crisis on the Polish border with Belarus exploded into…

Can Poland and the EU resolve the rule of law crisis?

1 November 2021 12:38 pm

In recent months the spectre of ‘Polexit’ has been haunting Europe. Poland and the EU have become embroiled in a…

Why did neo-Nazis patrol the German border?

30 October 2021 11:00 am

Just after midnight last Sunday, around 50 vigilantes gathered in east Germany to ‘patrol’ the country’s border with Poland. They…

The Spectator’s Notes

30 October 2021 9:00 am

When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war…

The problem with the EU’s messianic treatment of Poland

21 October 2021 5:00 pm

Mateusz Morawiecki insists his government does not want to take Poland out of the EU. ‘Eighty-eight per cent of Poles…

Poland’s top court has finally called the EU’s bluff

9 October 2021 12:26 pm

For many years, the EU has posed as a kind of overbearing imperial leviathan, which insists its law has to prevail over…

Donald Tusk is playing a dangerous game in dismissing Polexit

13 September 2021 9:42 pm

‘The British showed that the dictatorship of the Brussels bureaucracy did not suit them and turned around and left.’ That’s…

Fortress Europe is dreading the Afghan migrant crisis

25 August 2021 6:03 pm

Fortress Europe is pulling up the drawbridge. The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is likely to being about a…

Poles apart: The EU will never understand Poland

11 August 2021 7:05 pm

Poland was the largest state in Europe for over two centuries. It was a multi-ethnic commonwealth, a refuge for Jews,…

Hungary, Poland and the EU’s ‘diversity’ problem

2 August 2021 11:59 pm

It is quite something when the self-proclaimed ‘illiberal’ prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, reminds Brussels of its liberal principles.…

An open or shut case?

31 July 2021 9:00 am

Writers of memoirs are often praised for their honesty — but how do we know? I found I did believe…

The EU will regret its legal onslaught against Poland

17 July 2021 3:30 pm

When European governments openly disobey courts, ears prick up. When two courts simultaneously contradict each other on the same day…

The rule of law is breaking down in the EU

17 July 2021 9:18 am

There are 27 member states in the EU. Two have now declared they are not bound by EU law. Based…

So near and yet so strange

3 July 2021 9:00 am

This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…

How a Polish coal mine risks derailing the EU’s climate strategy

6 June 2021 4:59 pm

Cracks are appearing in the EU’s climate strategy. An international dispute over the court-ordered closure of a coal mine on…