Junior coalition partner issues ultimatum for ruling party – The First News

Poland’s accord, a minor ally within the right-wing coalition led by the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), has announced that it will leave the coalition if its proposals on impending controversial reforms are ignored.

The agreement’s senior politicians met on Saturday to discuss the recent crisis in the United Right after one of its deputy ministers was dismissed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki after taking some measures from the government’s comprehensive economic reform package, Poland’s New Deal, had challenged.

“We will not support tax changes, changes in the funding of local governments and changes to the media law if our postulates are not taken into account,” the agreement leaders said in a statement after the meeting.

“We make our presence in the United Right dependent on it,” added the heads of state and government.

The Polish New Deal includes two major changes in the Polish tax system, but one of them creates the greatest controversy in Polish society.

On the positive side, the tax changes proposed by the government include increasing the tax allowance from PLN 3,091 (EUR 680) for middle earners to PLN 30,000 (EUR 6,594) and for low wage earners from PLN 8,000 (EUR 1,759).

On the negative side, however, the 9 percent health insurance contribution is no longer tax deductible, which increases the effective tax rate by the same percentage.

This could represent an additional tax burden for entrepreneurs as well as middle and high earners.

In addition, Polish local governments are heavily dependent on income tax for their households, but under the new rules, citizens would only pay their taxes from an income of over PLN 30,000, which would seriously affect local government incomes.

The government says it will make up for the loss, but some local governments fear that the government may lend aid to its political allies in distributing subsidies.

In the media law controversy, a group of PiS MPs has prepared a bill that some see as targeted against the US television station TVN24, which is critical of the government. The move has raised concern in the White House, and recently a group of US Senators warned Poland to withdraw from the plans.

TVN24 has been struggling to renew its license with the state media regulator KRRiT since February 2020. The current license expires in September.

In its declaration, the Agreement stated that it supported the Polish New Deal in principle, but could not agree to the three reforms in their current form and called on the PiS to amend the bills so that they take into account the proposals of the agreement.

“In each of the three cases, we have presented our coalition partners with specific remedial measures and await a debate on them,” the party concluded.