Poland – The new left-liberal anti-PiS coalition in Poland has already been going through its first scandal before it even has a government. A bill introduced by MPs from the new majority in the Sejm to 'freeze’ energy prices for the first half of 2024 includes provisions intended to remove barriers standing in the way of wind turbine projects on land.

This is happening while this new majority is still formally in the opposition as PM Mateusz is trying to find support for a government led by Law and Justice – the most voted party in the October 15 elections, but without an absolute majority in the Polish parliament.

As it soon appeared, these provisions have been co-authored by lobbyists from the wind energy sector. Some of these provisions have raised particular outrage. Such was the case, for example, with a provision, which would seemingly allow seizing land from their owners for the purpose of building new wind turbines. Another one makes it possible to build big wind turbines just 300 m from residential buildings.

The author of those provisions, Paulina Henning-Kloska, from the Poland 2050 party, one of the two parties forming the centrist Third Way alliance (the second most numerous force in Donald Tusk’s anti-PiS coalition), was seen until now as the likely next climate and environment minister in Tusk’s third government but the embarrassment caused to Tusk’s coalition by her bill could cost her the post.

On December 7, PiS MPs further accused the new parliamentary majority of working hand in hand with lobbyists after the rapporteur from Tuks’s Civic Platform (PO) had an expert he had invited answer technical questions for him in the parliamentary commission in charge of discussing the bill. The said expert later appeared to be a lawyer working for the energy sector.

On December 5, the justice ministry announced that the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw had opened an investigation into influence peddling. The notice of suspicion of a criminal offense was submitted by a group of MPs belonging to the incumbent United Right coalition led by PiS. In Poland, the justice minister is also the country’s prosecutor general.

“There needs to be an internal investigation into the wind turbine bill at the level of the heads of the groups who coordinate cooperation [within the new coalition]; it’s a matter of elementary trust between the groups, everything has to be clear among us”, PO senator Grzegorz Schetyna told TVN24 on December 5 as some members of Tusk’s coalition expressed their surprise at the bill proposed by their Poland 2050 colleague which, they said, had not been consulted with them.