This article is part of a series covering the Fabian New Year Conference , written by Dave Baldock and Sue Watson

Keynote speech – Barbara Nowacka, President of Inicjatywa Polska and Minister for Education

International Address – Pedro Silva Pereira, Portuguese MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament

Miguel Costa Matos MP, Member of the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic

The final session featured three European politicians giving a wider perspective of how events in Europe were impacting on them.

Barbara is an MP for the newly formed Polish government and began the session with an overview of the recent election. The 2023 elections were important and gave Poland a choice between getting closer to the EU or Russia. With around three million refugees from Ukraine, Poland has much to contend with.

The previous Law and Justice regime were a right-wing populist government, playing on Poland’s catholic heritage to limit socially progressive policies. They had been in power for eight years. They were authoritarian in nature, did not respect the rule of law and had restricted abortion. The government determined what was taught in schools and had ensured public TV was like the Russian “Pravda” model.

To defeat them, there was a wide coalition of the three main opposition parties, not ideal but necessary to ensure Poland remained a pro EU nation and continued to support Ukraine. The coalition engaged with civil society and groups that had suffered under the regime – there were many of these as Law and Justice was anti-abortion, and unsupportive of the LGBT community. A six-week long protest in schools had ended without success but had not been forgotten by the teachers involved.

The three main opposition groups, Civic Coalition, Third Way, and New Left, took 54% of the votes, winning enough seats to allow them to take power. According to the final vote count by the National Electoral Commission, Law and Justice won 194 seats, the Civic Coalition 157, the Third Way 65, The L eft 26, and the Confederation Liberty and Independence 18

The coalition had come together and had held since the election, with ongoing campaigns to build a common future and deal with the corruption of the previous regime. Poland had many refugees and was aware of the brutality of the Russian government.

The new Government was led by Donald Tusk, who was well known across Europe and helped ensure Poland remained pro EU and not under Russian influence.

Pedro Silva Pereira appeared via video link and gave greetings from the European Parliament. Britain, while outside the EU, had several common issues and continued to work with the EU to address these.

Miguel Costa Matos was part of the Socialist government in Portugal. Governments of the left are rare in Europe at present, and he was pleased to be able to talk on how the Government was making progress on a range of issues. An election was due in March 2024.

An interesting session and a reminder that many of the Countries in Europe have similar issues to the UK, Poland is more effected by the war in Ukraine, and Russian influence remains.

DB