European Summit after 440 Years

New Nation

On July 1, 1569, during the General Sejm in Lublin, the Kingdom of Poland formed a union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was created, with one monarch, one parliament and a common foreign policy. For a few months now, Lublin has been preparing for the anniversary celebrations. The Monument of the Union of Lublin and Jan Matejko’s painting Unia Lubelska (The Union of Lublin) have been renovated. The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) invited the Prime Ministers of the member states of the EU and the Presidents of Poland, Lech Kaczyński; Lithuania, outgoing Valdas Adamkus; Latvia,  Valdis Zatlers; Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko; Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves and the former President of Belarus,  Myechyslau Hryb (Lukashenko’s predecessor).

First Union in Europe

The authorities of Lublin and President Kaczyński also invited José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. However, he will not come, just like the Prime Ministers and Presidents of Estonia and Latvia. Instead, the former Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Stanislau Shushkevich, will be present. Honouring the Presidents with Honorary Degrees of KUL will be the highlight of the day. The absence of Barroso is, paradoxically, quite convenient, as he would be the only one invited and not awarded a degree. A few months ago, KUL wanted to honour him but eventually decided against it. The official reason was that Barroso did not confirm his visit to Lublin, the unofficial reason is, however, his views are incompatible with the Church’s teachings. This concerns the Treaty of Lisbon and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which he approves of. The disputable matter is the lack of “invocatio dei” (reference to God) in the document. Although he was not invited, Lukashenko will appear in Lublin in some sense. The Lithuanian artist, Redas Diržys, has planted beets, carrots and radishes in the centre of Lublin. By July 1, the vegetables are supposed to form a portrait of Lukashenko.
Wyborcza.pl

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Going Away? Don’t Tell Your Boss

Shh... Don't Tell Your Boss

If your boss asks you to leave a phone number at which s/he will be able to reach you while you are away on holiday, by no means should you agree to it. Moreover, you should not yield to pressure even if your superior threatens you with revoking your holiday. The Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data (GIODO) is on your side. One employer has asked all of his/her employees to leave contact numbers in case they are needed to return to work. According to the GIODO this is illegal. The employer has no right to do this as it is against the law. Such practice is only acceptable in very particular circumstances and concerns employees performing a strategic function in a company.
Dziennik

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Lower Silesia under Water

Severe Weather

Flood alerts and flood warnings are in force in a few provinces in the south of Poland. The danger point and flood state have been exceeded in a number of places. In the regions threatened with floods firefighters have intervened hundreds of times. However, the situation is becoming stable in the Ropczycko-Sędziszowski district (the Subcarpathian Province), where as a result of heavy rains the local river Wielopolka burst its banks on Thursday. 400 houses have been hit by flooding and as many as 600 people have been evacuated. There is also one fatality – a middle-aged man from the village of Brzeziny. His body was found on the shore of the river. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration (MSWiA) Grzegorz Schetyna together with the Deputy Head of the Presidential Chancellery Władysław Stasiak went to Ropczyce on Friday. After night rainfall in Lower Silesia flood alerts are still in force in 9 places: Wrocław and Jelenia Góra as well as the municipalities of Marcinowice, Stare Bogaczowice, Świdnica, Kłodzko, Zagrodno, Nowa Ruda and the Kłodzko district. The flood-warning service is in force in 16 towns and cities. Due to the controlled flooding of one of Wrocław’s streets and a farm located in the city suburbs, a flood alert has been introduced in Wrocław. According to a Polish Press Agency (PAP) press officer in Wrocław, Krzysztof Gielsa, within the last 24 hours firefighters from Lower Silesia had to intervene as many as 257 times. Weather forecasters say that it is still going to rain heavily.
Gazeta Prawna

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Plagiarism Under the Microscope

To Copy or Not to Copy?

At the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, a Doctor of English studies has owned up to a double academic deception, after which he appeared before a disciplinary committee. For ‘double’ plagiarism he will probably face a life ban on the right to practice his profession as a university teacher. There are similar cases in progress in Łódź, Warsaw, and Kraków. According to experts from Plagiat.pl, as many as 25% of all dissertations contain plagiarism. “We do not have detailed information on the scale of this plague in Polish universities, however we can base it on foreign research. The situation in Poland is comparable with that in other countries, if not worse,” says Doctor Sebastian Kawczyński, head of Plagiat.pl. Indeed, the research is alarming. In 2004 almost 25% of British students admitted to committing plagiarism, whereas in Germany the number of such students amounted to as many as 50%. According to Marek Rocki, the head of the State Accreditation Committee, universities finally began to perceive the problem, as they introduced a system to fight plagiarism. “Most of our departments have been using  the Plagiat.pl system for many years,” says Magdalena Gardas, spokeswomen for the University of Szczecin. She continues saying that a dissertation is not allowed to be defended if more than 20% of its content is borrowed. “What is interesting, after implementing the system in universities, advertisements for writing theses to order have disappeared from the internet,” says Gardas. For committing plagiarism one may face civil and criminal charges. The penalty for attributing to yourself the authorship of someone else’s work, even without any financial profit, is three years’ imprisonment.
Rzeczpospolita

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Changes in Inheritance

More Heirs

From the 28^th of June 2009, the group of intestate heirs who inherit from a person that did not make disposition of his or her estate in the event of death will include more relatives. As a result of the new amendments, both grandparents and stepchildren will have the right to inherit, whilst parents will receive a larger share of the inherited estate from a childless person at the expense of his or her siblings. A single mother will get half of the inheritance after the death of her only child and will inherit concurrently with the child’s spouse only when relation to the biological father of the dead child cannot determined. “Increase in the number of intestate heirs will limit the right of the municipality as well as of the Ministry of Treasury if the last place of residence was outside Poland,” says Maria Urbańska from Kosiński i Wspólnicy. The new regulations are stipulated in the Act of the 2^nd of April 2009 in the amendment to the Civil Code Act (Journal of Laws No. 79, item 662). However, the new regulations will apply only to estates after the new Act comes into force, i.e. after the 28^th of June 2009. To the group of intestate heirs have been added grandparents, both on the father’s and mother’s side, as well as their descendants, i.e. the aunts and uncles of the deceased. However, grandparents will inherit only if the deceased did not have any spouse or close relatives such as: children, grandchildren, parents, siblings or descendants of the siblings who can and would like to inherit a property from him or her. Their shares in the inheritance are equal regardless of whether they are married or not.
Gazeta Prawna

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New Prison Measures

Prison Changes

Prison wardens will have the right to incapacitate prisoners. These new measures will include knee joint blockade and devices for incapacitating prisoners with an electric shock. Moreover, the rules for prison worker disciplinary action will change radically. This has all been stipulated in the prison service bill, which was voted through by members of Parliament yesterday. The bill includes a list of measures which can be used not only on prisoners, but also by visitors who attempt to disturb the peace in prisons. A new device, namely a knee joint blockade, prevents an escorted person from escaping. According to the legislators, this device will considerably improve the working conditions of wardens as well as enable the secret and professional escorting of prisoners who, for instance, have obtained permission to take part in family events. Another measure, a device for incapacitating prisoners with an electric shock, successfully incapacitates someone behaving aggressively and who refuses to be inspected or checked. Furthermore, disciplinary courts will be done away with while disciplinary spokespersons will be appointed. What is more, superiors will decide about disciplinary liability, whereas a police officer will get the right to appeal against his decision.
Gazeta Prawna

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Beating bad, spanking good?

Stop Spanking

Almost 70% of parents admit that they spank their children, and over 60% permit corporal punishment. These are the results of the Childhood without Violence (pol. Dzieciństwo bez przemocy) campaign report led by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and Nobody’s Children Foundation (Fundacja Dzieci Niczyje). 50% of Polish people would support a ban on corporal punishment, however, almost 90% thinks that it should apply only to beating with the hand or with other objects. Only 30% would support a ban on spanking, whereas 45% thinks that in some situations it is acceptable to beat a child, with 16% claiming that beating can be used as a method for bringing up children. The Ministry of Labour has prepared an amendment to the Act on Countering Domestic Violence. It mentioned corporal punishment and the possible separation of the perpetrator and victim. “We think that the perpetrator should leave the house, not the victim,” said Jarosław Duda, Secretary of State and the Government Spokeperson for Disabled People. The Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Kwiatkowski added that the drop in the delinquency rate in Poland applies to domestic violence to a very small extent. The Childhood without Violence campaign is supposed to make people aware of the negative consequences of corporal punishment and to convince parents that spanking is also an act of violence. “Parents do not beat their children because they like it, but because they were brought up that way and now they do not know how to do it differently,” said Marek Michalak, the Ombudsman for Children.
Wyborcza.pl

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Trust Accounts Protect Customers

Investment Time

The first investment funded by means of a trust account has come into being. In the event of the bankruptcy of a developer, the trust account protects home buyers against the loss of their money. Customers who buy new flats are increasingly more often afraid that developers will go bankrupt and they will lose the deposit they have already paid. Therefore, both banks and developers have decided to work to the needs of customers and have proposed a trust account. For instance, Polbank EFG together with Alpha Krakow Development has developed this form of financing the investment. Money from a mortgage and private contributions are transferred to the trust account, but a developer will receive them only when it has been confirmed that another stage of the investment has been carried out. This gives the customers a full guarantee that they pay only for what has been realised.

“If the developers do not realise a certain stage at the agreed period, customers have a guarantee that the money returns to the bank or their bank account, if the customers had private contributions,” says Tomasz Gryn, manager of the Mortgage Department at Polbank EFG. The trust account offered by Polbank is open which means that a developer receives a specific sum of money after the company finishes a certain stage in construction. A different form of trust account is a closed account because the developer gets all the money paid by customers after the entire investment is finished. As a result, if the developer goes bankrupt, the customers do not lose any money that they have paid. Moreover, during the realisation of the investment, customers do not bear any costs because they commence payment of their mortgages only after they receive the keys to their flats. “In practice, this shows that the trust accounts do not cause an increase in the price of a property,” explains Georgios Notopoulos, general manager at Alpha Krakow Development. Customers have to pay several thousand Polish złoty for having a trust account. For example, in PKO BP bank the cost of having a closed trust account amounts PLN 3,600, an open account amounts to PLN 4,500. The Ministry of Infrastructure would like trust accounts to be obligatory. According to Marek Zawiślak, manager of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Ministry of Infrastructure, thanks to these accounts the interests of both customers and investors will be protected.
Gazeta Prawna

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Cheaper House Construction

Cheaper Homes?

Within the last three months the costs of building a 150-metre-squared house have dropped by 6%. In comparison to the autumn of 2008, this decrease amounts to 30%. Today, in order to build such a house with an unfinished interior you have to spend over PLN 317,000 which is almost PLN 135,000 less than in October 2008. “The price of building materials and labour are now the same as they were in 2006. Nevertheless, manufacturers will not be willing to reduce prices even more because they already have only minimal profits,” says Lechosław Nykiel from the Department of Investment and Real Estate at the University of Łódź. “It is true that any further fall in prices is rather unlikely, since this could lead to the bankruptcy of numerous producers of building materials,” adds Witold Werner from the Institute of Urban Development. Therefore, according to experts, we may now expect stable prices in the single-family buildings market. The last three months have already brought slight changes. Recently, the price of foamed polystyrene, plaster and window woodwork has fallen. On the other hand, some materials have recently gone up in price. For example, we have to pay more for wood rafter framing (PLN 750–850 per cubic meter), for tiles (PLN 26–28 per item), as well as for glass, and water and sewage systems. “Prices in the building industry are falling; however, increasingly slower. This is caused mostly by less demand for building materials and services,” says Grzegorz Marciniak from Bud-Ma.
Wirtualna Polska

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Fast, Furious and Dead

Need for Speed?

In 2008 Poland was 2nd place in the whole European Union when it comes to the number of road deaths. Lithuania occupies the top spot. Those are the conclusions drawn from the latest report of the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) which was published yesterday. In 2008 5,437 people died on Polish roads, that is 143 road deaths per million people. In Lithuania the ratio was 148; in Hungary 99; 104 in the Czech Republic; Romania and Bulgaria were just behind Poland with, respectively, 142 and 139 road deaths per million. At the beginning of the decade, EU countries agreed on reducing road deaths by 50% by 2010. Nothing has changed in Poland so far – in 2001 the ratio was 145. However, other countries have managed it. In 2001 France had a similar statistic to Poland with 134 road deaths per million population. Today, with 69 road deaths, they have managed to go below the EU average – mainly thanks to draconian regulations. In 2007, over 27 million tickets for violation of traffic regulations were imposed in France. Over 7 million thanks to speed cameras. The fines from these tickets amounted to €883 million and the highest individual fines were as high as €6,800.

In Latvia the number of road deaths dropped by 43% thanks also to stricter regulations and penalties, for example for driving with 100 mg alcohol per 100 ml of blood one can be sentenced to 15 days in jail. Over 39,000 people died on roads in the whole EU in 2008. This equals the number of citizens in an average city. Why does Poland do so poorly? “Roads themselves cannot kill. It’s the drivers that must adapt to the situation on the roads,” says Maria Dąbrowska-Lorenc from the Centre for Road Safety. “Speeding is the main reason for car accidents,” she adds. According to the authors of the report the main reason why so many road deaths have been prevented is the safety of vehicles. Improvements in design have helped prevent some 10,640 adult deaths over the past decade and 5,470 since 2001 in the EU-27. Over two-thirds of cars in Poland were manufactured more than ten years ago which is almost double the whole EU average. According to the data provided by the Polish Police, 31% of road accidents were caused by speeding; 24% by not giving right of way to other vehicles; 8% by not giving right of way to pedestrians and 7% by the improper overtaking of other vehicles. 30% of all accidents were caused by drivers of company cars, even though they only make up 5% of all cars registered in Poland according to the Partnership for Road Safety.

Dąbrowska-Lorenc, from the Centre for Road Safety, is certain that the Act regulating the usage of speed cameras will help solve the problem. “In France, the number of road accidents dropped by 20% during the first year after a similar Act came into force,” she adds. In Poland that would amount to almost one thousand people. However, President Kaczyński has sent the Act to the Constitutional Tribunal, because the immediate execution of the punishment which is stipulated in the Act does not provide a clear path for appeal in his opinion. Moreover, President Kaczyński also finds the regulation which allows one to sell one’s vehicle when one refuses to pay a ticket voluntarily to be too severe a punishment. Mikołaj Karpiński, spokesman of the Ministry of Infrastructure, is optimistic. “The National Plan of Road Safety assumes reducing road deaths by 50% by 2013. That is three years later than the EU plan. According to the initial data of road deaths between January and May 2009, there have been 450 fewer deaths than the similar period in 2008,” says Karpiński.
Gazeta Wyborcza

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