Poland: the law on the prohibition of foreign ownership of the media passes. The majority are moving further to the right
The lower house of the Polish parliament voted 228 to 216 late Wednesday on legislation restricting non-European ownership of the media. The law prevents non-EU companies, even using a corporate screen in the EU, from buying Polish TV and media. The rule is, in general, aimed at ensuring that the Chinese and Russians do not control European media, but the intended victim is Discovery Inc., the American owner of the largest Polish private television network. The bill now goes to the Senate.
The move was criticized by US senators, the State Department and the EU as an attempt to gag the independent media. At the same time we should ask ourselves how independent is a media controlled by a society which is itself politically manipulated by a party, all the more foreign. Before the vote, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki fired his deputy, Jaroslaw Gowin, leader of a minority party in the ruling coalition and increasingly fierce opponent of the PiS leadership. In the meantime, however, he has embarked on another right-wing party, Kukiz'15, with which he obtained the majority. No government crisis, but an adjustment.
Discovery appealed to the Polish Senate and President Andrzej Duda, a loyalist from the ruling party, to stop the law. The company said it was discriminatory and called it an attack on free speech. “The result will be of great concern to any company investing in Poland,” he said.
However, with the ousting of Gowin, the government finds itself in the minority or on the edge and will have to rely on forces of the right, even more radical than the PiS. In the end, the current government still has relations with Brussels, while the new allies may be even more skeptical.
"What Law & Justice is doing is nonsense and shows that it is a party of ideologues, focused entirely on domestic politics in which strategic concern plays a secondary role," Marcin Zaborowski, political director of the GlobSec think-tank said. Warsaw.
Wednesday's vote was postponed after opposition parties won a motion to update the parliamentary session for next month. However, the decision was canceled by the president of the chamber and in any case, with hindsight, it would not have led to anything.
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The article Poland: the law on the prohibition of foreign ownership of the media passes. The majority moves further to the right comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/polonia-passa-la-legge-sul-divieto-di-proprieta-straniera-dei-media-la-maggioranza-si-sposta-piu-a-destra/ on Thu, 12 Aug 2021 08:09:18 +0000.