Winter news from Kyiv

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 13/02/13

A political season usually starts later in Ukraine than in Poland. Christmas holiday falls there in January. However, a Ukrainian political year has not started yet. Normally, the Parliament should resume its session on 5th February but it didn’t. Opposition blocked the parliament’s presidium and rostrum demanding introduction of personal voting. The issue may sound [...]

Ukrainian day

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 07/02/13

Yesterday for me everything was all about Ukraine. I will start not very chronologically but in the afternoon the mission Kwasniewski-Cox arrived at the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament. After a long conversation, which concerned more the relations between the EU and Ukraine, it was decided that the mandate of the mission’s members [...]

Is there a future for Kwaśniewski – Cox mission?

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 30/01/13

The European Parliament is a practical institution. When majority is needed and an issue does not have to be tackled at a Plenary Session, a so called “Conference of Presidents” decides. The word conference is clear. “Presidents” are leaders of political groups. It is known how many swords they have in their scabbards. Thus, it [...]

Terms

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 14/12/12

We already know what the European policy towards Ukraine will be. The Council of the European Union accepted the guidelines which express an unfavourable attitude towards the election but do not close the door on work towards association agreement implementation. One can say that was the idea. But not exactly. Ministers of foreign affairs exchange [...]

Klitschko’s party – a dark horse of the Ukrainian elections

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 23/10/12

The elections in Ukraine will be held in 5 days. The experience shows that everywhere in the world the results will be a projection of current surveys. So what do they look like? The ruling party (Party of Regions) leads with a score of 22%. The second and third place are occupied ex aequo by [...]

Ukrainian campaign – quite a lot of violations of the law

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 10/10/12

I thought I knew all the election tricks, but Ukraine surprised me once again. A week ago I sent observers to Dnipropetrovsk to see how the campaign is running in the city which I am going to visit during the vote on October 28th. We know that half of the seats will be chosen in [...]

50 days before the election in Ukraine

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 10/09/12

In less than 50 days Ukraine will hold the parliamentary election. A few minor facts describe the landscape of this last stage. The opposition has decided to submit a motion for the dismissal of President Yanukovych, accusing him of constantly violating the constitution. 500 thousands Ukrainians signed the petition. They have no chance to succeed [...]

Ukrainian visas and dormant ghosts

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 10/07/12

Politics is like contracts with banks or insurers. What is written in lowercase must be read the most carefully. Yesterday after two hours of the vote in the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs the debate focused on the state of implementation of visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Ukraine. The representative of the European [...]

More than a cassation

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 15/06/12

The mission of Pat Cox and Aleksander Kwasniewski is taking a concrete shape (let’s call it for short ‘the CK mission’). What originally was supposed to be an observation of the cassation process turns out to be something much more important. Cox and Kwasniewski for almost half a year will be superobservers of Ukrainian politics. [...]

Let’s think warmly of Ukrainians

Posted by Marek Siwiec MEP on 08/06/12

Today starts the celebration which, regardless of the results, will bring us a lot of joy. There was never such an event (which goes far beyond the epithet ‘sport’) in Poland before, even though we tried more than once. Let me remind that Zakopane was to host the Olympics and Wroclaw – Expo 2012. But [...]

Marek Siwiec MEP on Poland & Europe rss

Marek Siwiec, Polish Member of the European Parliament, writes about European Neighbourhood Policy, defence policy, Polish Presidency of the EU Council, Polish politics and other topics related to European and international affairs. more.



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