Today’s news round up in Poland

Start your day with a summary of today’s top stories from Poland’s leading news sites.

Rz.pl – The newspaper Rzeczpospolita ran a story on Monday on how a lack of access to EU post-pandemic funding could delay investment in railway infrastructure and, as a consequence, result in layoffs by construction firms. Poland has had access to the money blocked owing to a rule-of-law dispute with the EU. The paper citied the problems of PLK, the company which manages Poland's rail infrastructure, which has launched 17 tenders but cannot sign contracts with firms owing to the lack of secure funding.

TVPInfo.pl – Public broadcaster TVP ran a story on the old "eastern Policy" of the Polish government under Donald Tusk. TVP quoted Joanna Lichocka, an MP from the governing Law and Justice party, saying that the government under Tusk was one of the "most pro-Russian" governments since 1989. She also said that Civic Platform, Tusk's party, along with the Polish People's Party, had strong links with Moscow. The most shocking example of the Russian ties, she claimed, was when the government handed over the investigation into the Smolensk air disaster to Moscow.

Wyborcza.pl – The newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza looked at what changes the government might make to the laws governing elections in Poland. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, said this month that the opposition might rig the next election and therefore the system needed additional protection. But the newspaper said the government's track record on election laws and regulations indicates that any new laws could discriminate against opposition parties. It claimed, for example, that PiS had introduced a number of changes to the State Election Commission, which oversees the party funding of election campaigns, which means the commission is "no longer protected from political pressure."

TVN24.pl – The port city of Gdynia will have no Christmas market or New Year's Eve party this year because of the soaring cost of electricity, the private news network TVN24 reported. The city's government said that, faced with a huge electricity bill, it needed to cut its budget. "We have to make savings so we decided to focus on expenditures that will not directly affect the level of public services," said a local government representative.