Populism in the dispute on Polish dockyards

The three Polish dockyards are threatened with closure because the EU Commission has demanded that Poland return a billion euros in funding after failing to come up with a plan for making them profitable again. The left-wing liberal Gazeta Wyborcza criticises the accusations levelled at the EU and the government by the dockers and the Polish opposition. "We may be in the EU, but we are still Poles. So if the shipyards end up being closed, there will immediately be a reckoning up and a search for the guilty parties. This is about emotions and populism rather than facts. Furious dockers will come to Warsaw and claim that they never received any public assistance. ... They will demand that the treasury minister resign, even though far more responsibility lies with the previous government, which failed for years to find a solution to the problem. Accusations will be levelled at the EU Commission, which is allegedly under the thumb of western dockyards. ... But the problem of the dockyards is actually much sadder than that. For it concerns their inability to adapt to changed circumstances."

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