Tusk held a press conference after the government meeting regarding the draft 2024 budget.
The public media that it is now does not deserve funding from taxpayers’ pockets
– said Tusk in response to a journalist’s question.
He announced, “We are ready to support public media outlets after the situation improves,” adding that no funds will be allocated to operating public media outlets in next year’s budget.
Regarding the fact that the Sejm will put on its agenda on Tuesday the resolution on the public service of television and radio and the Polish News Agency, Tusk said: The document “represents the first step towards improving public media.”
He announced: The parliamentary majority will prepare laws that “restore the basic neutrality of the public media.”
According to the draft resolution presented on Tuesday by representatives of the parliamentary majority coalition consisting of the Citizens’ Coalition, the Polish Peasants’ Party, the Poland 2050 Party and the New Left faction, the Sejm calls on the competent bodies representing the state treasury to take “remedial measures” with the public media against.
The Sejm obliges itself to immediately begin legislative work “to ensure the permanent restoration of the state in accordance with the Polish Constitution.”
According to the decision’s supporters, the Law and Justice Party, which ruled from the fall of 2015 until last week, did not implement the decision taken by the Polish Constitutional Court in December 2016, which partially classified the provisions as unconstitutional. From the media law that came into effect in early 2016, according to which the National Council of Radio and Television (KRRiT) abolished the right to appoint the heads of public radio and television, as well as the People’s Action Party.
Even after the parliamentary elections in October of this year, the public media “campaigns in favor of the former government camp (…), sometimes aggressively attacking the current government (…) and presenting a completely false picture of reality to society.” . The decision states.
Simon Holonia, Speaker of the House of Representatives, emphasized in his press conference on Tuesday morning: The resolution is not legally binding, it only “formulates the essence of the doubts regarding the National Media Council (established in 2016),” according to the MTI report. .
PiS representative Lukas Schreiber told reporters that the parliamentary majority was “trying to prepare for its illegal actions through a resolution” regarding public media. Schreiber stressed that the decision “cannot call into question the laws and the Constitution.”
Polish public media are currently under RMN supervision, and KRRiT continues to operate and monitor the enforcement of freedom of expression.
(Cover photo: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at the press conference after the first meeting of his government formed as a result of the October 15 parliamentary elections at the Prime Minister’s Office in Warsaw on December 19, 2023. Photo: Leszek Szymanski/EPA/MTI)
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