Political/commercial background

摘要

The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, in coalition with smaller parties, leads a government with a razor-thin majority in parliament. The prime minister is Mateusz Morawiecki, but the main decision-maker is the PiS chairman, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Poland's president, Andrzej Duda, is also originally from PiS. EIU expects a new government led by Civic Platform (PO) to win the election in November 2023, owing to faltering popular support and growing perceptions of mismanagement by PiS. Various government scandals and intra-coalition in-fighting are eroding PiS's previously stable support base, and the return of Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland and president of the European Council, as leader of PO has also strengthened the opposition's legitimacy. Since 2015 successive PiS-led governments have passed a series of controversial reforms to entrench their control over Poland's institutions. The independence of the judiciary has been significantly curtailed, and the Constitutional Tribunal (the country's constitutional court) has been transformed into a politically pliant body. Although a compromise was reached with the EU in 2022, requiring the repeal of the judicial reforms, we do not expect a total policy reversal owing to disagreements within the ruling coalition.