European Contexts Seminar Series
With Wojciech Szacki, head of political desk, Polityka Insight; Bartosz T. Wieliński, deputy editor -in chief, Gazeta Wyborcza, and Marek Świerczyński, head of security desk, Polityka Insight.
When: Friday 9 May 2025, 9:30-11:30 CEST
Where: In-person, Presseclub Concordia, Bankgasse 8, 1010 Vienna AND online via ZOOM
There are two ways to follow this seminar:
- Presseclub Concordia attendance - Registration!
- Zoom participation - Registration!
Background
European politicians cheered when Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform won the 2023 parliamentary elections in Poland. Expectations were high: the new government would revert ultraconservative trends, reinstate the rule of law, free the media, liberalise abortion, among other issues. Two years later, Donald Tusk suspended the right to asylum on the border to Belarus and plans to leave Ottawa Agreement, Abortion has not been legalised.
On 18 May 2025, Poland holds presidential elections. Campaign promises indicate that candidates are trying to outdo one another to win conservative voters. As BalkanInsight writes: “Gavin Rae, a sociologist at Warsaw’s Kozminski University, says the candidates are mainly competing “on the right, on war and immigration, on who is the most militaristic and ready to spend more on the military.” The difficulty for PiS, Rae tells BIRN, is that “Tusk has moved so far to the right on these issues, that there is not much room left to compete with him.””
Wojciech Szacki, Bartosz T. Wieliński, and Marek Świerczyński will explore political issues at stake, different aspects of the transition process from PiS to Civic Platform and militarisation.
Speakers
Politics, transition expectations, media
Wojciech Szacki, head of political desk, Polityka Insight. From 2002-2012, he was a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza, focusing on party politics and opinion polls. Szack co-hosts “Nasłuch” podcast, and writes for Polityka weekly. He graduated in law at the University of Warsaw in 2002.
Bartosz T. Wieliński, journalist and political scientist, deputy editor- in -chief of Gazeta Wyborcza. He joined the paper in 1998. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, El País, and La Repubblica.
Security and Militarization
Marek Świerczyński, head of security desk, Polityka Insight. Świerczyński focuses on on Polish defence policy, NATO, conflicts and crises, technical modernisation, and Polish-US military cooperation.
Moderators
Mirjana Tomic fjum/Presseclub Concordia, and Simon Weiss, senior researcher, security expert, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Vienna
Format
Moderated conversations followed by Q&A
Target Groups
Austrian and international journalists, thinktank analysts, and academics.
Number of participants in Presseclub Concordia
Maximum: 70
Number on online participants
Maximum: 100