Local superintendent may change face of educational ... - Krakow Post

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NO. 32 WWW.KRAKOWPOST.COM DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Local superintendent may change face of educational system
Poles seek equal
retirement age
Ombudsman Jan Kochanowski
has sued the Constitutional
Tribunal over regulations
governing the retirement age
of women and men 4
Arrest warrant on
tycoon Krauze lifted
The arrest warrant for business
tycoon Ryszard Krauze has
unexpectedly been lifted. One
of Poland’s richest citizens can
now come back to Poland 6
Arriva PPC opens
private railway
The British-Polish company
Arriva PCC has recently begun
operating the first privately
owned railway in the country 8
Polnord to build in
St. Petersburg
Polnord, a subsidiary of Prokom,
is set to commence a massive
construction in St. Petersburg 9
Skyscraper to tower
over Poland
Poland’s Palace of Culture and
Science is set to be overshadowed
in four years’ time 10
New low cost route
Krakow-Paris
The low-cost French-Dutch
airline Transavia has recently
begun flying daily between
Krakow and Paris 12
Jerzy Lackowski, a former Malopolska Province school superintendent who now heads the Teachers College at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, has become a consultant to
an old friend, Minister of Education Katarzyna Hall. Together, the two plan to create a voucher system under which students could go to the school of their choice.
Iwona Bojarczuk
STAFF JOURNALIST
Jerzy Lackowski, a former Malopolska
Province school superintendent who now heads
the Teachers College at Krakow’s Jagiellonian
University, has become a consultant to an old
friend, Minister of Education Katarzyna Hall.
Together, the two may change the face of
Polish education. Their plans include creating a
voucher system under which students could go
to the school of their choice.
They say bringing a free-market system to
education would make schools better because
they would have to compete for students.
Lackowski and Hall have been calling for
school reform for years. In addition to vouchers,
they want a system that shifts control of
schools from teachers and administrators to
parents. They also want a system in place that
allows the government to revoke the licenses of
incompetent superintendents and teachers.
Teachers have too much power today, they
feel. Teachers union rules require equal pay
for equal length of service – which means that
poorer teachers get the same money as much
better ones. The rules almost make it difficult
to fire a teacher with four years or more of
experience.
Lackowski believes there is an urgent need
in Poland for a student school-choice system
like the ones in the U.S., New Zealand and
Sweden.
School choice can come through vouchers,
by giving schools additional tax money
for each student they attract, and by granting
autonomy to schools in choosing the curriculum
and profile of teaching. A voucher would
be equal to the cost the government pays for
one student’s education. Each student going to
a school would have a voucher, so the more students,
the more money the school would have.
“Of course before introducing educational
vouchers we will need to analyze the cost of
educating individual students and compare it
with the amount of government revenue assigned
for education,” Lackowski said.
One drawback of a voucher system would
be that unless special arrangements were made
for village schools, they would suffer under
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the reform. That’s because voucher-system
success is based on large enrollments, which
bring in a lot of money, and village-school enrollments
are small.
In fact, if a school budget were linked entirely
to the number of students, village-school
vouchers would be unable to cover the schools’
costs, Lackowski said.
Former Deputy Minister of Education Slawomir
Klosowski expressed doubts about
vouchers in a report to then-Prime Minister
Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
“We are afraid that the educational voucher”
will bring “racial segregation at schools,”
Klosowski said. He said he also worried that
“parents, especially in rural areas, will have to
drive their children several kilometers” to get
to the schools the children want to attend.
See SCHOOL on Page 13

2
The Krakow Post
R E G I O N A L N E W S
Ex-Soviet states seek energy
ties with Japan: official
The GUAM regional bloc of four former Soviet
states late last week called for closer ties with
Japan over both energy-saving technology and
pipeline construction in the Caspian Sea.
Representatives of the group – Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – visited Japan,
a major energy importer, for talks with Foreign
Minister Masahiko Komura.
“Japan is the world leader in energy-saving
technologies,” Andriy Veselovskyi, deputy foreign
minister of Ukraine, told a news conference
with other GUAM delegate members.
“We are interested to have this technology.
This is beneficial both for us and for you because
Japan expands their technologies to other countries,”
he said.
The group at the same time called on Tokyo
to take part in construction of additional pipelines
in the energy-rich region in an effort to diversify
energy supplies.
“Diversifying routes of energy would be beneficial
for the region and for the world market,”
Veselovskyi said.
Japan, the world’s second largest economy, has
virtually no natural energy resources of its own.
The European-oriented GUAM was formed in
1997 as an alternative to the Commonwealth of
Independent States, a Kremlin-dominated grouping
of ex-Soviet countries. (AFP)
U.S. broadcaster denounces
jailing of Azeri correspondent
A U.S.-funded broadcaster denounced the jailing
of its Azeri correspondent late last week for
slander by the same local court that had cleared
him of the charge two days earlier.
Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
called in a statement for the immediate release of
42-year-old correspondent Ilgar Nasibov.
Nasibov turned up at the court in the western
city of Nakhchivan expecting to be given his dismissal
charges after being cleared of the slander
charges brought by local police two days earlier.
“Instead, without the presence of legal counsel,
the judge reinstated the charges and sentenced Nasibov
to 90 days in prison,” the broadcaster, funded
by the U.S. Congress, said.
RFE/RL president, Jeff Gedmin, said the court’s
action was “a complete mockery of due process
which violates Azerbaijan’s own lawful, judicial
procedure.”
Nakhchivan police had subjected Nasibov and
his wife, who also works for the broadcaster, to
harassment by bringing spurious charges against
them for more than a year, he said.
Both journalists had highlighted human rights
abuses and abuses of power in the former Soviet
Republic in the South Caucasus.
RFE/RL broadcasts 10 hours daily to Azerbaijan,
producing most programming in its bureau in
the capital Baku. (AFP)
Czech lawmakers approve
foreign military missions
Czech lower house lawmakers late last week
approved government plans for foreign military
missions next year, which include a boosted presence
in Afghanistan but a reduced one in Iraq.
In Iraq, Czech Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova
announced plans in October to cut the
force from 100 to 20 next year with effect from
July 2008. Most of the current Czech contingent is
deployed around Basra in southern Iraq, where one
of its main tasks is to guard the international base
not far from the city.
As part of a wider reshuffle, the government
also proposed boosting its forces serving in Afghanistan
from 224 to 415.
The Czech’s largest current foreign contingent,
the around 550-strong peace force in Kosovo,
should remain at existing levels next year.
The government proposal has still to be cleared
by the Czech upper house, the Senate. (AFP)
Czech gov’t unchanged on
missile shield after report
The Czech government vowed late last week
to press ahead with negotiations with Washington
about hosting part of an anti-missile shield despite
a U.S. intelligence report downgrading the threat
posed by Iran.
“The U.S. intelligence report will not influence
the attitude of the Czech government in the face of
further negotiations with the U.S. over the possible
installation of a radar station on Czech soil,” the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The threat of a missile attack from “rogue
states” such as Iran is frequently cited by Washington
as the main reason for its missile defense
shield project.
The Czech Foreign Ministry stressed that the
U.S. report, released Monday, concerned Iran’s
nuclear program and not the development of missile
delivery systems, which it said was ongoing.
“According to the report, Iran will probably be
capable of producing a sufficient quantity of nuclear
material for the production of a nuclear bomb
between 2010 and 2015.
“This corresponds with the previous estimates.
By this date the European pillar of anti-missile defense
should be in place,” the statement said.
The U.S. plan calls for the installation of a powerful
targeting radar in the Czech Republic and 10
interceptor missiles in Poland by 2012. (AFP)
P O L A N D
“New Jews” kindle revival in lost heartland
Polish Jews celebrating Hanukkah.
agence france-presse
the krakow post
The Ministry of Education has done an aboutface
and begun considering whether to add a section
on religion to the comprehensive examination
that high school seniors must pass before they can
graduate. Students would not have to pass the religion
component to obtain a diploma. They would
simply have the choice of taking it if they wanted
to. The ministry’s decision reverses the Prime
Minister Donald Tusk administration’s stance on
the religious-component issue in its earliest days
in office.
News of the government’s about-face has
touched off an angry debate on the subject. On one
side are Catholic Church officials and politicians
who support religious values. On the other side are
those who want to keep religion out of schools.
Prime Minister Tusk said that although his
administration is discussing the idea that the previously
ruling right-wing party Law and Justice
originally proposed, the government is far from
making a decision on it. Church officials began
pushing for a religion component in the comprehensive
exam in 1999, according to Father Piotr
Tomasik, who works on education issues for the
Conference of Polish Bishops.
The ultra-conservative, pro-Catholic Law and
Justice party began working on adding religion to
the exam after it won the most seats in the lower
house elections of 2005.
The education minister at the time, Roman
Giertych, put together a plan for the religion component
in 2006. Representatives of the Catholic
Church, 12 other religions and religious associations
worked with him on the plan.
With the help of this religious advisory group,
Giertych produced a sample religion component
for the exam.
In Europe’s former Jewish heartland,
flickering Hanukkah candles are a symbol
of both the annual religious festival and the
inner light guiding dozens of Poles to their
roots and the culture of their forebears.
The revival of Judaism in Poland is being
kindled by “new Jews”: Poles raised
in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust and
Communist-era anti-Semitism, who have
chosen to leave the mainstream in a country
that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.
After ceremonies marking Hanukkah in
Warsaw’s Jewish cultural center, recent convert
Agnieszka Kwasniewska, 37, recalled
her awakening.
“When I came to the synagogue, it was
like I had always belonged,” she told AFP.
“It was like coming home.”
Like many of her counterparts, Kwasniewska’s
conversion began as a quest to
understand the things left unsaid by her
family.
“We never talked about my ancestors. It
was like something had been broken,” she
said. As a 12-year-old, her paternal grandmother
had told her she had been forced
to hide during World War II because she
“looked like a Jew.”
“I knew there was something not quite
right in this story. She cried a lot. We never
talked about it again.”
“Later I asked my father and he said,
‘That’s past history, and there’s no going
back. We’re Catholics’,” said Kwasniewska,
whose conversion to Judaism has caused
tension with her family.
According to various estimates, Poland
counts just 3,500 to 15,000 Jews out of a total
population of 38 mln people, more than
90 percent of whom are Catholic.
But it is near impossible to say how many
Poles have some Jewish ancestry.
Jews first emigrated to Poland from western
Europe to escape 11th century pogroms,
and on the eve of World War II, there were
around 3.5 mln there.
The capital Warsaw alone had a Jewish
community of 400,000, ranging from the entirely
non-religious to traditionally-dressed
Orthodox believers. It was the largest Jewish
city in Europe and the second in the
world after New York.
After invading Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany
transformed Warsaw’s Jewish district
into a Ghetto, to isolate and eventually wipe
out the population.
Half of the six mln Jews killed by the Nazis
were Polish, and most died in Nazi concentration
camps set up in occupied Poland,
such as the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In 1945, Poland’s surviving Jewish population
numbered just 280,000.
Many emigrated to the U.S. or Israel,
either immediately after the war or during
waves of anti-Semitism in the 1950s and
1960s.
Many Holocaust survivors who had been
able to hide their Jewish identity during the
war decided to keep it that way in the postwar
era to protect the next generation. Others
came from mixed Catholic and Jewish,
or non-religious, families, where identity
was not hard and fast.
Another recent convert, Maciej Krasniewski,
20, adjusted his yarmulke skullcap
as he recalled the day he learned he
was Jewish.
“I found out when I was 13,” he said.
“I had got interested in my family’s
name. Polish names ending in ‘ski’ can
mean you have origins in the nobility, so I
was looking up my roots. I asked my father,
and he said: ‘Our real name is Kirschenbaum.’”
Krasniewski’s paternal grandfather had
survived the Holocaust, and the family
picked a Polish name in 1954.
Kransiewski said he took five years to
When Ryszard Legutko replaced Giertych as
education minister a few weeks before the end of
the Law and Justice party’s two-year reign, he said
he saw no reason for religion to be in the exam.
One of the archibishops, Slawoj Leszek Glodz
apparently thought it was a Law and Justice double-cross.
On Aug. 18, he threatened an all-out war
over the issue, and Legutko relented.
The government drew up a plan to include religion
in an exam to be given to 1,000 students at 50
schools in the spring of 2008.
Then the Civic Platform party ousted Law and
Justice in the national elections of late October.
The victors said they would drop the idea of putting
a religious component in the comprehensive
exam.
Church officials were apoplectic about the
government turn-about. Archbishop of Warsaw
Kazimierz Nycz demanded, and got, an audience
with Deputy Minister of Education Krystyna Szumilas
to discuss the issue.
Szumilas said after the meeting that she saw no
problem continuing work on the proposal. Tusk’s
statement later that no decision has been reached
on the issue suggested that the government could
back away from it, however.
The plan that church officials worked out with
Giertych was to include religion in a list of subjects
in the exam that high school seniors would
not have to pass in order to obtain their diploma.
The current education minister, Katarzyna Hall,
said that if some students want to show a mastery
of religious content by passing a religion section of
the exam, the ministry should make the component
available to them.
Other Civic Platform officials oppose the idea.
And the Left and Democrats party has threatened
to sue if the Tusk administration decides to include
a religion component in the exam. They believe
convert to Judaism, due to both fears of public
reaction and his lingering Catholic belief
that it would be a sin.
The spark for Krasniewski and his twin
brother was a recent holiday.
“We were standing in the middle of
Prague’s old Jewish district, and we decided
to convert,” he said.
“At first there was a struggle in our family,
to stop us going back to what they had
escaped from,” he added.
But the twins’ grandfather eventually
warmed to the idea, and finally told them
the story of the brothers and sisters he lost
during the Holocaust.
Krasniewski’s brother chose to become
an Orthodox Jew, and follows a strict kosher
diet. Krasniewski considers himself a conservative.
He said he is still wary of wearing his yarmulke
in public due to lingering anti-Semitism,
but, borrowing a phrase from the gay
rights movement, says he plans to.
“It’s like coming out. We’re here, we
won’t go away, get used to it. If you don’t
do it, no one will know there are Jews in Poland,”
he said.
Poland’s “new Jews” also want fellow
Jews, notably those from the U.S. and Israel
who come to visit the sites of Nazi-era death
camps, to wake up to the growth and even
the very existence of their community and
stop seeing Poland only as a vast cemetery.
“Other Jews need to see the reality of
Jewish life in Poland,” said Anna Janot-Szymanska,
37, who learned of her roots as a
teenager and said she is still a “Jewish beginner”
with a more cultural than religious
interest.
Her 27-year-old sister Malgorzata, who
runs the Jewish center in Warsaw, wants
visitors to come and meet with the growing
community.
“Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, there’s
a spark,” she said.
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Foreign
ministers
hail new era
in ties with
Germany
agence france-presse
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier and his new Polish counterpart
Radoslaw Sikorski said late last week they
hoped to mend bilateral ties that soured under
Poland’s former government.
“We both said that we want to open a
new chapter in German-Polish relations,”
Steinmeier said after talks with Sikorski in
Berlin.
He thanked Sikorski for coming to Germany
on his first visit abroad as the top
diplomat in liberal Prime Minister Donald
Tusk’s government.
“We see this as a sign of your interest and
willingness to play a role in breathing new
life into the relationship between Germany
and Poland.”
Sikorski told reporters: “I would like to
second every word of that.”
Ties between the two neighbors suffered
under nationalist Prime Minister Jaroslaw
Kaczynski, who was soundly defeated by
Tusk and his Civic Platform in October
elections.
Kaczynski missed few opportunities to
reproach Germany over its World War II
past. He told fellow EU leaders during a row
about voting rights in the bloc this year that
had the Nazis not invaded Poland it would
today be a nation of 66 mln people instead
of 38 mln.
But while Steinmeier and Sikorski exchanged
warm remarks, Tusk’s new advisor
on relations with Germany, Russia and
Israel sounded a warning over a simmering
row triggered by German plans to honor
those expelled from their homes in central
Europe at the end of World War II, including
Germans who were forced to flee modernday
Poland.
The project has the support of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, but has been
condemned by Warsaw for failing to make
a distinction between the victims and the aggressors
in the war.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said in an interview
with Die Zeit weekly published on
Thursday that he was saddened by Berlin’s
plans to create a center in memory of those
expelled after the war.
“It does not suprise me but it saddens
me,” said Bartoszewski, who is a survivor
of the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.
“We should not create a situation which
forces the new Polish government to react
in the same manner as the old government,”
he warned.
Problems with school religious exam
such a move would be unconstitutional because
it would be inserting religion into the educational
process. Education experts point out that universities
use scores on the comprehensive exam to
help decide which students to admit. Thus, these
experts say, the Education Ministry should draft all
questions on the exam.
If a religious component is included in the
exam, the experts say, the church will be deciding
the questions, not the Education Ministry. That
means the ministry will be ceding its authority for
overseeing the exam to outsiders, these experts
say. Tusk said that although he feels “great esteem
for and sympathy toward Archbishop Kazimierz
Nycz,” the decision about a religion component in
the final exam will not be made in talks between
government officials and “people from outside the
government.” It will be made solely by government
officials, he said.
The arch-Catholic Giertych said the Law and
Justice government did so much work on the proposal
that backing away from it now would amount
to breaking a promise to the Catholic Church and
others who championed it. “Any change is impossible
without consultation with the Conference of
Polish Bishops,” he added.
Left-leaning politicians detest the idea of a religion
component in the exam. “It is a sign of primitive
conservatism,” Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the deputy
head of parliament, said in a radio interview. He
is one of the leaders of the Union for Democratic
Left Wing party.
He maintained that politicians should promote
tolerance, openness and respect for all religions but
not be involved in forcing into the comprehensive
exam a section that basically deals with one denomination
– Catholicism.
Introducing religion into the exam also would
favor students wanting to go into university theology
departments, he added. Beata Gorka, a spokeswoman
for Catholic University of Lublin agreed
that the religion-component results would help
those interested in theology gain admission to universities
that offer theology programs.
What does the public think about the issue? The
polling group PBS DGA reported that more than
61 percent of Poles it polled for the daily Gazeta
Wyborcza newspaper opposed the idea of a religion
component in the comprehensive exam. Thirtytwo
percent supported the idea and seven percent
were undecided.
Thus public sentiment is running 2 to 1 against
the idea. Schools do not require students to take religion
courses. Students can choose to take religion
courses, can choose to take ethics courses or can
choose to take neither.
Jaroslaw Zielinski, an MP and member of Law
and Justice party’s chamber of ethics, said one out
of three students at most schools take neither religion
nor ethics courses. Tadeusz Bartos, a journalist
who is also a theology expert, said on TOK FM
radio that government officials should remember
that they represent all Poles when they consider
proposals to include such a religion component in
the comprehensive exam.
The notion that a decision about the issue might
be made in private talks between an archbishop
and a deputy minister is unacceptable, he said.
There should be a public debate on the issue, he
contended. The debate should include the question
of “what is the function of religion as a school subject,”
he said. Is that function instilling knowledge
or proselytizing, he asked.
If the main function of teaching religion is instilling
knowledge, then there is a case for including
it in the comprehensive exam, he said. If it’s to
proselytize, then it is inappropriate to include it in
the exam, he suggested.

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
P O L A N D The Krakow Post 3
Russia,
Poland end
meat dispute
agence france-presse
Russia’s agriculture minister late last
week agreed to end a ban on Polish meat
imports, removing a bone of contention
between the historic rivals that has strained
EU-Russian ties.
“We are in complete agreement on resuming
deliveries of meat products from
Poland,” Agriculture Minister Alexei
Gordeyev told journalists in Moscow.
Gordeyev was speaking after talks with
his Polish counterpart Marek Sawicki, part
of the government under Poland’s new liberal
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has set
out to improve relations with Russia since
taking office last month.
“An agreement will be signed next week
in Kaliningrad between the veterinary services
of the two countries,” Gordeyev said,
referring to Russia’s westernmost province.
“As soon as the memorandum is signed, deliveries
will begin again.”
The dispute is behind the Polish government’s
veto on a wide-ranging EU-Russia
partnership and trade agreement meant
to smooth relations between Brussels and
Moscow. Despite the apparent resolution
to the meat problem, the Polish government
said it would not remove the veto before the
embargo was fully lifted.
“There is no timetable. We are waiting
for the signature of a document on the resumption
of deliveries,” ministry spokesman
Piotr Paszkowski told AFP.
Vasily Likhachyov, a member of the Foreign
Affairs Committee of Russia’s upper
house of parliament, said Poland must now
respond to the Russian gesture.
“After the settlement of the problem
of delivering meat from Poland to Russia,
there is no basis for the veto,” Interfax quoted
Likhachyov as saying.
The partnership agreement is seen as
particularly important in the EU because it
will include provisions for energy relations
as the EU increases its reliance on Russian
oil and gas imports. Moscow imposed the
meat embargo in November 2005, accusing
Poland of shoddy food safety standards.
Warsaw claimed the ban was groundless and
a purely political move. Wednesday’s agreement
was the latest sign of thawing of historically
poor relations between Russia and
Poland, frozen for the past two years under
the conservative, nationalist government of
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov vowed to turn a new page in bilateral
relations after meeting his new Polish
counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski in Brussels.
Vancouver to make airport
changes after Taser death
agence france-presse
Western Canada’s biggest airport announced
changes late last week prompted by
the death of a Polish traveler lost in the terminal
for nearly 10 hours before panicking
and dying in a violent police arrest.
Robert Dziekanski’s case made world
headlines after an amateur video of his
death was released last month, showing
police repeatedly stunning the distraught
traveler with a Taser less than 60 seconds
after they first approached him.
It was in the secure international baggage
zone, the size of two football fields,
that Dziekanski apparently became lost after
he arrived from Frankfurt on Oct. 13,
while his mother waited for him on the
other side of a wall in the public zone.
To avoid such problems in the future, the
airport will open an information center for
travelers in the international baggage area,
Vancouver Airport Authority president
Larry Berg told reporters.
As well, patrols of secure areas would be
beefed up and signage would be improved,
he said. Berg said the airport would set up
easily identifiable, terminal-wide access to
translation services, 24-hour in-terminal
medical response, add a messaging service
from the secure area to the public greeting
area and improve signs with pictograms
and multiple languages.
Staff would also begin doing walkthroughs
each hour in the area to try to
identify lost or confused travelers and assist
them.
Berg said the changes follow a sevenweek
review of “every aspect of our operations,
from customer care to communication,
safety and security, and even building
design.”
He said staff will continue to look at improvements
in the future. In video released
November 15, four police officers pile onto
the Polish man as he writhes and screams
in pain on the floor, then falls still within
minutes. Dziekanski, 40, had arrived in
Canada as a new immigrant who planned
to join his mother.
Multiple inquiries into his death include
a provincial public inquiry, a police homicide
investigation and an independent
coroner’s inquest. The federal government
also ordered a review of the police use of
Tasers, while Polish prosecutors are also
looking into the case.
President at
odds with
new PM on
Iraq: Tusk
agence france-presse
Poland’s new liberal Prime Minister
Donald Tusk admitted late last week
to holding divergent views from conservative
President Lech Kaczynski
on Iraq and the proposed U.S. missile
defense shield.
“Concerning Iraq, the differences
of opinion are quite serious,” Tusk
told journalists following a one-hour
meeting with the president aimed at
ironing out any creases in their potentially
awkward cohabitation.
Tusk and his liberal Civic Platform
dealt a stunning election defeat in
October to Kaczynski’s twin brother
Jaroslaw, the previous prime minister
and current leader of the right-wing
opposition Law and Justice party.
In a speech outlining his policies
to parliament on November 23, Tusk
promised that Poland would end its
current mission in Iraq by the end of
2008.
Tusk said the president was not
convinced that this was the correct
course of action, but expressed confidence
that he could win him round.
Defense Minister Bogdan Klich
has even indicated that the 900 troops
Poland has deployed in Iraq could be
back home by next summer.
Tusk also said the two leaders held
different views about Polish-U.S.
negotiations on the installation of
interceptor missiles as part of a U.S.
missile defense shield.
“The president is more enthusiastic
than me, without there being a
fundamental difference between us
on this matter,” said Tusk.
“The president is more determined
(to find an agreement with the
Americans), independently of what it
costs Poland.”
The U.S. plan calls for the installation
of a powerful targeting radar in
the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor
missiles in Poland by 2012.
Tusk also said the presidency had
stressed the “good atmosphere” of
the meeting.
Germany, Poland seek truce on WWII remembrance
the krakow post
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said early last week she was
receptive to a Polish proposal to build a World War II museum but
defended a disputed war memorial center planned in Berlin.
“It is an interesting idea,” Merkel told reporters after her first
talks with new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk since he took
office last month, when asked about his idea for a museum in the
northern Polish city of Gdansk.
But she said the museum could not replace German plans to
build a memorial center for the mlns of Germans expelled from
central and eastern Europe after the war.
“Our project is in no way intended to make light of the causes
and consequences of World War II,” Merkel said, adding that a German
delegation would travel to Warsaw soon to discuss plans for
the center.
Warsaw has raised concerns that the German project would fail
to distinguish between the war’s victims and aggressors.
Despite the differences over the memorial, Tusk said he was
pleased that Merkel had underlined her rejection of individual bids
by German expellees to seek restitution from Poland.
“It is important to restore relations between our two countries to
the same level as our own personal relations,” a smiling Tusk told a
joint news conference with Merkel.
Relations between the neighbors suffered under Tusk’s right-wing
predecessor Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who missed few opportunities to
reproach Germany over its Nazi past. In an interview with the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung published last week, Tusk questioned plans
to establish the Berlin memorial center and proposed the museum in
his hometown of Gdansk, which was once the German city of Danzig.
Some 14 mln Germans fled or were expelled, often brutally, from
their homes in eastern Europe from 1944 as the Soviet Red Army
advanced and Germany’s Nazi Third Reich crumbled. Around half
of them lived in what is now Poland. Merkel and Tusk also discussed
the planned “Nord Stream” pipeline from Russia’s Baltic
coast to Germany and other European countries via the Baltic Sea.
Poland, whose territory will be bypassed by the project, has
raised environmental and other objections. Merkel said the German
and Polish economy ministers would discuss the issue with a view
to addressing Warsaw’s concerns.

4
The Krakow Post
P O L A N D
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
R E G I O N A L N E W S
Suspect in dance master’s
death appears before court
A man accused of murdering well-known
Russian dance master Dmitri Bryantsev was remanded
in custody by a Czech court late last week
following a brief appearance, commercial broadcaster
TV Nova reported.
Police have not identified the man thought to
be behind the murder of the artistic director of
Moscow’s Stanislavsky Ballet but said he was a
foreign citizen.
Bryantsev, 57, disappeared on a short trip to
the Czech Republic in June 2004 and a nationwide
search was launched when he failed to return
home. His remains were only discovered in woods
near the central Czech town of Jicin in June this
year. Police said they charged a man with murder
in connection with the case on Friday.
They believe an argument erupted over a financial
deal between the two men as they drove together.
The younger man then shot his companion
several times and hid the body.
The suspect faces a jail sentence of up to 15
years if found guilty. (AFP)
Officials dismiss idea of
Belarus-Russia union
Russian officials dismissed late last week talk
of an impending deal with Belarus to make President
Vladimir Putin head of a “union state” comprising
the two countries, Echo of Moscow radio
reported. The reports came ahead of a visit by Putin
to neighboring Belarus today for talks with his
counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.
“This absolutely doesn’t accord with reality,”
a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said when
asked if the two sides would sign an act of union.
Earlier Echo of Moscow cited unnamed sources
in Lukashenko’s administration as saying the two
leaders would sign a “constitutional act on the creation
of a union state of Russia and Belarus” and
that Putin would head the new entity after his term
as Russian president ends next year.
Under the scenario, Lukashenko would become
speaker of the “united parliament,” the station reported.
Lukashenko’s spokesman Pavel Lyogky
rejected the reports, telling AFP they had prompted
“surprise in Belarus.”
“We don’t confirm the information that Alexander
Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin in the near
future will sign in Minsk a constitutional act and
share powers in a union state,” he said.
Speculation is mounting over possible scenarios
by which Putin could retain power after the end
of his second term in May, when he is constitutionally
obliged to stand down.
While Belarus and Russia have close ties – Putin
regularly refers to the neighboring state as “fraternal”
Belarus – there are also strains. When Putin
was named at a meeting of his United Russia party
to stand at recent parliamentary polls, Lukashenko
commented that watching the meeting on television
he had “wanted to vomit.” Lukashenko, who
has been branded a dictator by the West, was on a
visit to Venezuela on Friday. (AFP)
Police bust Vietnamese
prostitution ring
Czech police broke up a suspected prostitution
ring with raids on houses and brothels Saturday
night during which 11 Vietnamese were detained,
the news web site Novinky.cz reported late last
week. Police from a special squad to combat organized
crime carried out searches of the Vietnamese’s
homes in Prague and the western city of
Domazlice, and also swooped on one brothel in the
western Czech border town of Cheb and three others
in the capital, the news web site said.
The raids followed several months of preparations
for the operation. Jail sentences of a maximum
15 years could be imposed, it added. The
Czech Republic’s Vietnamese community, fostered
during the Communist era when Vietnamese
were brought over to work in factories in the former
Czechoslovkia, represents one of the biggest
groups of foreign migrants in the country. (AFP)
Greenpeace members end
Czech power plant protest
Greenpeace activists late last week ended a
two-day protest on top of the chimney of the biggest
thermal power plant in the Czech Republic,
which they say is the country’s biggest polluter.
“We succeeded in attracting attention about
the links between the biggest Czech thermal plant
which emits the most carbon dioxide, the company
CEZ, carbon extraction and the Czech position on
climate change,” spokesman Jan Pinos said.
The Prunerov II plant in the north of the country
near the German border is considered to be the
country’s biggest polluter, spewing out 8.9 mln tons
of carbon dioxide annually.
Eleven activists from Britain, Germany, Austria,
Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic
scaled the 150 meter chimney in the morning. Five
came down that evening. The demonstration coincided
with the international climate change conference
in Bali, Indonesia, where world leaders will
try to chart out the next steps to curb the greenhouse
gases blamed for global warming. The protesters
are due to meet Czech Green party leader and environmental
leader Martin Bursik on Saturday before
he departs for the Bali summit. Bursik has attacked
CEZ for not investing in the latest clean technology
and spending its profits on an acquisitions spree in
other European countries. (AFP)
Tusk focuses on improving foreign policy
PM Donald Tusk.
the krakow post
Poland’s new Prime Minister Donald
Tusk is focusing on improving his nation’s
foreign policy. He says the former government’s
policy was damaging Poland’s
relations with, for example, Germany and
Russia. In recent days he has visited Italy,
Belgium and Germany to discuss key issues.
Together with his Foreign Minister
Radoslaw Sikorski, Tusk says he intends
to work hard to make Polish foreign policy
more open for compromise and cooperation.
During his meeting with European
the krakow post
Ombudsman Jan Kochanowski has sued
the Constitutional Tribunal over regulations
governing the retirement age of women and
men. Currently, retirement age in Poland for
men is 65 and for woman 60.
In the ombudsman’s opinion, it should be
65 for both sexes. Kochanowski thinks that
different retirement ages are unjust and discriminatory,
because women’s shorter work
lives mean lower government pensions.
“A woman retiring at the age of 60 will
be given a payment of 66 percent of a man’s
pension. If she would work until age 65, the
percentage would be 88.7,” Kochanowski
said at a press conference. In addition to
this, Kochanowski said, an earlier retirement
age for women increases their risk of
being fired after they qualify for pensions.
The real drama will start in 2009 when the
pension reform act of 1999 takes full effect.
Savings will be taken into consideration,
and women may be penalized with lower
pensions. In addition, Polish women on
average have five times lower salaries than
men. If women cannot earn more, perhaps
they can work longer.
Currently women stop working earlier
because it has very little effect on their pensions.
Ombudsman Kochanowski believes
that the age of retirement should be flexible,
so that women will not be forced to work
until age 65 if they do not want to.
Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso, Tusk
showed significant differences with his
predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Tusk emphasized
there was no conflict between the
interests of Poland and those of the EU.
Barroso and Tusk agreed the mutual relationships
should be based on trust. Nevertheless
the new prime minister is not going
to bow to every EU demand but rather
make the relations based on solid negotiations
and a rapid resolution of any conflict.
“It’s important to stand up for your nation,
to defend the crucial interest of your
nation,” Tusk told the EU commissioner.
The ombudsman says that the equalization
of retirement age is a European trend.
The equal retirement age is mandatory in
Denmark (65 years), Germany (65), Spain
(65), Ireland (65), Holland (65) and France
(60).
A very interesting rule was introduced
in the Czech Republic: The more children
reared by a woman, the lower the retirement
age. Jolanta Fedk, minister of labor
and social policy, also approves of equal
retirement ages, but she says that Poland is
not prepared for such a change and should
wait for the Constitutional Tribunal verdict.
Fedk also is considering a so-called marriage
pension where the pension would be
inherited by the surviving spouse when the
other spouse died.
According to a survey by the newspaper
Gazeta Wyborcza, 56 percent of those polled
said they want no retirement changes, and
30 percent said they want to equalize the retirement
age of men and women.
In Kochanowski’s opinion, equalizing
the retirement age is not all that should be
done. “Raising the retirement age is needed”
for both sexes, he added. Retirement
and pensions will become a more urgent issue
in coming years. In 30 years, up to 45
percent of Poles will be over 50 years old.
Currrently, 29 percent of Polish people are
50 and over. In 2060 it is estimated that each
working person will be supporting three
nonworking persons.
“This tough defense, if you will, of your
interest in the EU also means the ability
to cooperate, the ability to show mutual
respect. As a representative of the Polish
government alongside with others who
have fought for the EU, I will stand up and
defend the European interest as well but
always in the spirit of mutual trust and cooperation.”
Foreign Minister Sikorski met his Russian
counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Brussels
for the highest level talks between the two
countries in over a year.
Diplomats said the meetings would have
a symbolic dimension since Tusk, a centerright
liberal, had promised in the election
campaign and in his inaugural speech to put
Poland back in the EU mainstream and to
end verbal hostilities with Russia.
Poland’s relationship with Russia, after a
year of tensions between the two countries,
was also at the top of the agenda in talks
dominated by EU issues during Tusk’s
meeting with his Italian counterpart, Roman
Prodi, in Rome on Dec. 7.
The Italian prime minister complimented
Tusk on Poland’s efforts to improve relations
with Russia.
This follows a previous Polish government
stance to block talks on a new EU-
Russia agreement after Russia imposed a
ban on imports of Polish meat products.
Another very important issue of Tusk’s
foreign policy is Poland’s second big
neighbor, Germany.
As Germany and Poland are looking to
repair their bilateral relations, first Sokorski
and then Tusk visited Berlin.
Relations between the two countries
have been strained because of the previous
Polish government’s stance on certain
EU issues and discussions about a proposal
for a controversial Center for Displaced
Persons in Germany by an association concerned
with the fate of Germans expelled
from Eastern Europe after World War II.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier assured Poland that the German
government didn’t support the controversial
property claims by some Germans organized
into the Association for Displaced
Persons against Poland.
“I am glad that we are also able to talk
about the difficult subjects, and I can call
them that, in a very open and trustworthy
atmosphere,” Steinmeier said.
And indeed the atmosphere seemed
more friendly. Sikorski and Steinmeier
were even on first-name terms.
The meeting brought forth mutual assurances
that the political relations between
Germany and Poland would improve.
Poles seek equal retirement age for men, women
Polish police seek Santa
agence france-presse
Polish police were searching
late last week for a suspect who
robbed a village grocery disguised
as Santa Claus. Witnesses
of the hold-up Thursday in
Ploty, northwest Poland, found
it difficult to describe the robber
who wore a Santa costume with
a plastic face mask and long
white beard, police said.
The thief gave his best wishes
to the saleswoman before brandishing
an item resembling a
handgun and making off in a
getaway car with several thousand
zloty (several hundred
euro, dollars).
The robber chose November
6 for the heist, celebrated as the
feast of St. Nicholas in Poland.
Wanted: Santa.
Retired couple window shopping in Krakow.
Andrzej Kowalski

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
P O L A N D The Krakow Post 5
Stolen British
tractors turn up
in Poland: police
agence france-presse
Two hi-tech tractors stolen in southern
England by a suspected vehicle trafficking
gang and apparently bound for Ukraine
have turned up in Poland, police said late
last week .
“They are luxury-end John Deere and
New Holland tractors,” said Tadeusz Kaczmarek,
a police spokesman in the central
Polish city of Radom.
The tractors, which were snatched in
the southern English county of Hampshire,
were discovered by Radom police in a
sealed truck which was traveling from Britain
to Ukraine.
A third tractor found in the truck had
had its chassis number filed off, preventing
police from immediately identifying from
where it had been stolen.
Three individuals were arrested, Kaczmarek
told AFP.
Police later discovered a fourth New
Holland tractor without a chassis number at
a site related to the suspected thieves.
Such tractors are the farm world’s equivalent
of a luxury car, boasting features such
satellite navigation, air conditioning and
even the latest in-vehicle sound systems.
“We estimate the price of the vehicles
we have recovered at around a mln zloty
(280,000 euro, $400,000),” Kaczmarek
said.
“There are more arrests on the horizon. It
looks like we’re dealing with a whole theft
and trafficking network,” he said.
Poland busts Romanian gang
that used fake British cards
cc:sa: Solipsist
Poland stands
behind capital
punishment
the krakow post
The Tusk government has reversed Poland’s
refusal to go along with a European
Day Against Capital Punishment – a stand
that had prevented the Council of Europe
from establishing the day throughout Europe.
Joyful European ministers reacted to
Tusk’s decision by immediately moving to
establish the day.
Much of the rest of Europe had resented
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s refusal
to accept such a day.
Poland was the only country out of 47 in
the Council of Europe to refuse to go along
with the designation. That refusal was tantamount
to a veto because council rules require
a unanimous vote of member countries
before a special day can be established.
The Kaczynski government’s stand not
only rankled other Europeans but also contradicted
Poland’s own position on capital
punishment.
The government stopped executing criminals
19 years ago and outlawed the death
penalty 10 years ago.
Kaczynski had maintained that because
no court with jurisdiction over all of Europe
had outlawed the death penalty, there was
no reason to have a European Day Against
Capital Punishment.
Tusk’s decision to reverse Poland’s opposition
to an anti-death-penalty day has
already improved relations with the rest of
Europe, according to Ministry of Internal
Affairs and Administration Grzegorz Schetyna.
“Everything has changed in Poland,” he
said. “The government has changed, Poland
has changed and the decision has changed.”
Non-governmental organizations opposed
to the death penalty designated October
10 an International Day Against Capital
Punishment some years ago. The Council of
Europe decided in September to establish a
Europe-wide anti-death penalty day on October
10 as well.
In the last few weeks of his administration,
Kaczynski refused to go along with the
day. That killed the day for this year.
Kaczynski’s refusal prompted European
leaders to describe Poland as being backward.
A leading European socialist, Martin
Schulz of Germany, asked how long the rest
of Europe would swallow Poland’s effort to
block the day.
EU leaders should do everything they
could to show how out of touch Poland was
on the issue, Schulz said.
Tusk’s new Minister of Justice Zbigniew
Cwiakalski contends that “there was no reason
to object to establishing the European
Day Against Capital Punishment.
I am surprised that Poland came out
against it. Poland engaged in capital punishment
for the last time in 1988, and it has
been eliminated from the penal code for
over 10 years.”
Klaus Buchman, a well-known German
political scientist and journalist, said officials
might be able to justify capital punishment
in countries with no well-established
legal and penal systems – as was the case in
America’s Wild West territories.
Many territories lacked secure prisons, so
there was a real threat of a dangerous criminal
continuing to roam free, he suggested.
Thus territorial governments often imposed
the death penalty to threaten criminals by
severity of punishment.
In Europe, however, legal and penal institutions
are so strong that the death penalty
has been abolished on human-rights
grounds, Buchman said.
Nowadays, at least in Europe, capital
punishment looks like a relic of the past.
Some compare its abolition, in terms of
moral force, to the abolition of slavery.
agence france-presse
Polish police said late last week they had
arrested around 20 Romanians who were using
forged British credit cards to withdraw
cash.
“Five groups of three to four Romanian
citizens have been arrested in the space of
the past five months,” Polish national police
spokesman Zbigniew Urbanski told AFP.
The gang created cards with magnetic
strips thanks to reading devices stashed in
cashpoints in Britain, and used hidden cameras
to record personal identification numbers
(PINs) typed into the keypad by genuine
card holder.
Polish police believe that identity thieves
try to take advantage of differences between
Britain and Poland’s cashpoint systems,
which make it easier to pass off fake cards
as the genuine article. Unlike their British
equivalents, few Polish cashpoints require
a card to have a microchip, which provides
additional protection against fraud.
Criminal gangs around the world often
produce fakes encoded with genuine, stolen
credit card details, in order to make payments
and cash withdrawals at the expense
of victims of data theft.
Encoding data into a magnetic strip is
cheaper and easier than trying to fake a microchip.
In March, Polish police arrested three
British citizens who were using 85 separate
forged cards to withdraw cash in Warsaw.
Last month, police in Spain said they had
bust a credit card gang largely made up of
Romanians, arresting 44 people.
New bird flu case,
minister reports
agence france-presse
Poland was hit by a fourth case of deadly
H5N1 bird flu late last week when the disease
was discovered at a poultry farm, the Agriculture
Ministry confirmed.
“The new case was discovered in the village
of Saldowo, near to Biezun, (central
Poland) close to other recent cases,” Farms
Minister Marek Sawicki told reporters in
Warsaw.
“Just as in the previous cases all the
chickens will be culled,” Agriculture Ministry
spokeswoman Malgorzata Ksiazyk.
Three previous cases of H5N1-type bird
flu, which is fatal to humans, were discovered
earlier this month at chicken and turkey
farms 120 kilometers (72 miles) northwest
of Warsaw.
Veterinary authorities ordered a cull of
110,000 chickens in the area on Sunday.
A 30-kilometer isolation zone was established
Monday around the farm where the
newest case was discovered. Smaller zones
were created around the three other contaminated
farms in nearby villages.
The cases of H5N1 are the first to be
recorded in Poland among domestic fowl.
Last year the disease was discovered only
among wild birds.
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6 The Krakow Post
P O L A N D
R E G I O N A L N E W S
Italian PM Prodi, Pope hail
new PM Donald Tusk
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi hailed
late last week the prospect of better relations between
Poland and its neighbors as he hosted his
new Polish counterpart Donald Tusk.
Tusk took office last month promising to repair
damage caused by the previous conservative
government’s tough line towards Russia and the
EU.
Improved relations between Warsaw and Moscow
and Brussels were in the interest of the whole
of Europe, Prodi said after talks with Tusk.
He said Poland and Italy would work together
to help formulate an energy policy for Europe,
which relies on Russia for much of its gas supplies,
and a long-term relationship with Moscow.
Prodi said both countries would hold regular
top-level meetings, the first of which could be
early next year in Poland.
Tusk for his part said there were no points at
issue between himself and Prodi.
Following their talks the Polish leader went on
to the Vatican, where Pope Benedict XVI wished
him every success in governing largely-Catholic
Poland in a 20-minute meeting.
A Vatican statement said the two discussed
subjects “relating to Europe and Poland’s international
role.”
Tusk said afterwards that he had told the pope
he would always be welcome in Poland. (AFP)
Belarus opposition party
elects new leader
Belarus’ main opposition party, the Popular
Front, elected a new party leader, Lyavon
Barshchevsky, at a party conference in Minsk
Sunday. Barshchevsky, the 49-year-old co-founder
of the party, received 211 votes out of a possible
236. Former Popular Front leader Vintsouk
Vetsherka was elected the party’s senior vice
president.
Barshchevsky is a translator, teacher, man of
letters and linguist.
He was a member of the Belarus parliament
from 1990 to 1995.
Very strict laws constrain the activities of Belarus’
political parties, limiting any challenges to
the power of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Last month the UN General Assembly’s human
rights committee passed a resolution expressing
“deep concern” about the Minsk authorities’ use
of the criminal justice system to “silence political
opposition and human rights defenders.” (AFP)
Ex-Czechoslovak prosecutor
appeals jail sentence
A former Communist-era prosecutor will appeal
her eight-year jail sentence for her role in the
1950 show trial and execution of a Czech national
hero and three others, her lawyer said early last
week.
“We received the (sentence) decision last week
and lodged an appeal,” defense lawyer Zdenka
Havlikova told the CTK news agency of her client,
86-year-old Ludmila Brozova-Polednova,
who was convicted of murder in early November.
Brozova-Polednova is the last surviving prosecutor
involved in the death sentence of Milada
Horakova, a former WWII resistance hero and
Czechoslovak lawmaker.
The three others sentenced and executed a half
century ago were Jan Buchal, Zavis Kalandra and
Oldrich Pecl.
Communist authorities, who seized power in a
coup at the start of 1948, charged Horakova and
a handful of accomplices with plotting to overthrow
the state.
Her courageous self-defense and refusal to
play the role plotted for her in the show trial
resulted in Horakova becoming one of the main
symbols of the anti-Communist resistance.
Horakova’s sentence was cancelled in 1968
but her name was not fully cleared until 1990,
soon after the fall of the former Czechoslovak
Communist regime. The Communist regime executed
a total of 243 people for political reasons
between 1948 and 1989. (AFP)
Arrest
warrant
on tycoon
Krauze
lifted
the krakow post
The arrest warrant for business tycoon
Ryszard Krauze has been lifted.
One of Poland’s richest citizens can now
come back to Poland and will not be automatically
detained. The opposition Law
and Justice party suggests that this decision
is connected with the taking over of
the Ministry of Justice by Zbigniew Cwiakalski.
Krauze, owner of Prokom, one of Poland’s
biggest software companies, and
many other businesses, is charged with
false testimony as well as obstruction of
justice in connection with an action of
the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA)
against Ministry of Agriculture employees,
which failed after an information leak.
According to prosecutors, Krauze, former
Interior Minister Janusz Kaczmarek,
former Police Chief Konrad Kornatowski
and Jaromir Netzel, the former chairman
of the country’s biggest insurer, PZU,
were the people responsible for the failure.
The arrest warrant was issued on Aug. 30.
Krauze since then has remained abroad, officially
on business.
The warrant was lifted on Nov. 15, a day
before the new Donald Tusk government
stepped into office. In this cabinet, Cwiakalski
replaced Zbigniew Ziobro, who
personally appeared at many press conferences
devoted to Krauze’s case.
The opposition party responded to the
lifting of the warrant with a press conference
at which it called this decision scandalous
and pointed to the fact that Cwiakalski
was the author of an expert opinion
which was used by Krauze’s pleaders.
Some Law and Justice politicians called
on Cwiakalski to resign. But the justice
minister said the decision on Krauze was
taken before he assumed office and he
didn’t even know about it until last week.
He also declared that his expert opinion
was only based on Supreme Court verdicts
and not on Krauze’s situation.
According to Cwiakalski, Krauze’s case
will be handled the same as that of any other
citizen and when back in Poland, he should
testify. Even though the arrest warrant was
lifted, the charges against him weren’t.
Cwiakalski’s candidacy for the justice post
was strongly opposed by Law and Justice
as well as President Lech Kaczynski. They
both pointed out that in the past Cwiakalski
was an advocate of people charged with
corruption and that this stands in opposition
with his new role of chief prosecutor – an
office which is automatically held by the
justice minister.
Cwiakalski argued that he is no longer
an active lawyer and stressed that in the
past many advocates had become justice
ministers. He was also backed by Tusk,
who expressed his full trust in him.
Chechen independence
leader takes part in
Polish TV debate
agence france-presse
Poland risked the ire of Russia early this
week after Chechen independence icon
Akhmed Zakayev, who is wanted by Moscow
on terrorism charges, appeared on a
talk show on Polish public television.
Zakayev came to Poland to take part in
an edition of the popular program “Warto
Rozmawiac” (Worth Talking), which was
broadcast in the evening by the TVP2 channel
to mark World Human Rights Day.
“I want to thank the Polish people for
your help,” Zakayev said on the program.
“The fate of Poles and Chechens has
much in common,” he said.
“You have proved through your determination
and sacrifice that freedom can be
achieved. You are an example to us,” he
added.
Chechnya’s violent struggle for independence
from Russia broke out after the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991.
It attracted support from some Poles,
who draw parallels with their own nation’s
years of resistance, both violent and peaceful,
first to imperial Russian and later to
Communist rule before Poland broke free
from the then Soviet-dominated Communist
bloc in 1989. But Moscow has accused
Zakayev of involvement in terrorist acts.
Zakayev was once the envoy to Europe
of former Chechen separatist president
Aslan Maskhadov, who was slain in 2005.
He currently lives in Britain, where he
has had political refugee status since 2003.
British authorities have sparked Moscow’s
anger by refusing to extradite him,
citing lack of evidence and concerns about
the integrity of the Russian judicial system.
Russia regularly denounces countries that
host visits by Zakayev.
In June, for example, France found itself
under fire after Zakayev came to the eastern
city of Strasbourg to attend a session of
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe, the human rights and democracy
body.
Zakayev’s latest appearance comes as
Poland’s new liberal Prime Minister Donald
Tusk tries to mend fences with Russia.
Tusk has to contend with two years of
increasingly chilly Polish-Russian relations
during the two-year incumbency of his predecessor,
conservative nationalist Jaroslaw
Kaczynski.
Hungarian Cuisine and More...
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Christmas
approaches
with shopping
madness
the krakow post
Christmas is coming soon and with it a
fury of shopping.
Shops are trimmed with Christmas
trees, silver chains, reindeer, Santa Claus
and snowflakes appear on shop shelves
and carols are heard everywhere from
dawn to dusk and beyond.
All that is to make people feel the
Christmas spirit and to open their wallets
and for once in the year to forget about
saving money. Merchants have waited
for this moment all year.
The average Pole will spend 240 zloty
for presents this year (Ipsos). One out of
10 will spend more than 500 zloty. The
more educated people are the more money
they spend.
Men, who often say they’re not going
to spend much, end up spending more
than women (on average men 245 zloty
women 236 zloty).
“We will buy even more next year,”
said economist Witold Orlowski. “If the
economy develops people buy more and
that is right.”
Internet shopping also is feeling the
Christmas crush. Shopping online is becoming
more popular because it is easier
than traditional shopping. This is especially
true of busy big-city dwellers.
Online shopping can be done regardless
of the time of day, which is one
reason e-markets will be most popular
just before Christmas, said Jaroslaw
Sobolewski, analyst and e-business expert
working for Interactive Advertising
Bureau.
Poles spend huge amounts of money
on Christmas, often using credit—as
merchants rub their hands in delight.
Analysts say some Poles may run up a
bln zloty in debt this season.
Hypermarkets and banks have credit
to offer. Bank counters are located just
next to cash desks. Consumers can get
money quickly and easily. At Media Market
and Saturn credit covers as much as
60 percent of sold commodities.
Shops try to lengthen the Christmas
shopping season. Many start with promotions
and sales of Christmas trees even in
November. Shopping peaks Dec. 15-17.
“It is a kind of exaggeration. Just yesterday
we bought chrysanthemums and
candles and now we are made to buy
Christmas trees. In the past it was possible
to buy a Christmas tree just two
days before Christmas. Ornaments we
made ourselves. We had enormous joy.
Now every part of Christmas is aimed at
just spending money,” said Jadwiga Doroszkiewicz,
a pensioner.
Poland at Christmastime differs from
other countries. In Great Britain, for example,
the first Christmas decorations
can appear as early as September. In the
U.S., Christmas shopping starts on socalled
Black Friday, the fourth Friday of
November, the day after Thanksgiving.
“Christmas decorations on display
almost everywhere are to make us think
about presents and consequently to use
credit,” says Tadeusz Poplawski, sociologist
and chairman of the faculty of
marketing and enterprise at Technical
University of Bialystok.
Such spending is dictated by Christmas
“temples of consumption,” the huge
market centers. Such centers make the
greatest profits with small shops trying to
keep up. Christmas, a time of reflection,
meditation, joy and love, changes into a
race between shops.
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DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Schengen creates panic
among visa-less Americans
cc:sa:Diliff
B U S I N E S S The Krakow Post 7
European
Commission says
Polish steelmaker
misused state aid
agence france-presse
The European Commission said early this
week that Polish steel maker Huta Warszawa
misused state aid for restructuring in 2003,
before it was bought by Arcelor.
Under a restructuring of the Polish steel
industry, the company received around 50
million euros ($73.5 mln) of state aid, mostly
in the form of a guarantee for a loan to
fund investments in 2003 and 2004.
However, the Commission found that
around 30 mln euro ($44 mln) of the loan
was used in 2004 to pay off several old
debts, which was not part of the restructuring
plan.
The Commission calculated that the loan
guarantee gave the company an interest subsidy
worth two million euro, which it has
agreed to pay back.
The company was taken over in 2005 by
steel group Arcelor, which itself has since
been bought by Mittal Steel to form the
world’s biggest steelmaker.
Huta Warszawa is one of the bigger producers
of steel in Poland and has the capacity
to churn out nearly one million tons per
annum.
Czech
gov’t
cancels
tank
contract
after
series of
problems
Downtown Prague.
agence france-presse
More European borders come down this
month and there is panic among Prague’s
large U.S. community with a last minute
rush to get visas in order or quit the country.
Eric Snow, a 32-year-old from San Diego,
California, went through a six-month
bureaucratic nightmare when he decided to
upgrade his visa. Corry O’Brien, a 53-year
old retired government worker, who came
to Prague with thoughts of a long stay is
cutting it short rather than risk becoming an
illegal alien.
Traditionally, U.S. citizens with a 90-day
tourist visa took a three hour train ride from
Prague to the Czech Consulate in Dresden,
Germany, to get an extension there. Many
used the system to live and work undeclared
as permanent tourists.
The EU’s so-called Schengen zone has
changed all that.
The zone, where passports are not
checked once a traveler is inside, will be
extended on Dec. 21 to the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta,
Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
But it means that Americans and other
expats in Prague will have to go outside the
zone to get a new visa, and that means going
to the Ukraine, Switzerland or Romania
as some of the nearest destinations.
And tourist visas now only allow residence
within Schengen countries for three
months in any six-month period.
Snow feared he would have to endure a
90-day exile outside the Czech Republic
“somewhere in the East” as he wrestled
with getting his new visa.
“I was afraid I might have to leave the
country, or at least go away for a time. I
did not want that, I have made a life here,”
exclaimed the English language teacher.
“This Schengen thing came out of the
blue,” exclaimed O’Brien. “I thought I
could go somewhere for the visa extension
but I did not know I could not come back
for 90 days,” added the grey-haired collecter
of “cultural experience” whose family is
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of Czech-Irish descent.
“I did not realize you would have to go
to Switzerland or some non-EU country. I
can hardly afford to stay here because the
dollar has dropped so much,” she added,
referring to the halving in the dollar-koruna
exchange rate since 2000.
“To me its a shame I feel I have to go, but
I will not break the rules,” she concluded.
Snow feared he would face the Schengen
sanctions if he did not get his new visa before
the old one expired.
At one stage in his personal paper chase
and trial, Snow witnessed a Czech consulate
and the foreign police squabbling over
who should deal with his papers.
That followed a trip to the Dresden consulate
that he later found he did not need
to make. Like most other foreigners trying
to unscramble Schengen, Snow tried at first
to work out himself what to do by searching
an expats’ web site. “It was completely
wrong,” Snow mused.
He brought his mediocre knowledge of
the Czech language to bear on official information
sources, but found them lacking and
eventually hired an “agent” to circumvent
the administrative maze. His first agent got
him nowhere but a second one got him to
his grail, albeit around 5,000 koruna (190
euro/$279) poorer. “I would never try to do
this on my own. Get an agent is all I can
say,” he concluded.
The U.S. Embassy in Prague estimates
there are 5,000 Americans in the Czech
capital but an unknown number of the
400,000-500,000 U.S. tourists each year
stay behind. According to Snow many
Americans are taking their children out of
Prague’s English language schools because
of Schengen.
But visa-enabling agents are enjoying a
boom.
“We have got about half again as much
interest as we did at this time last year,”
said Nora Vinduskova in her small central
Prague office, adding that Australians,
Canadians, Japanese and Thais as well as
Americans are her main clients.
agence france-presse
The European Court of Justice late last
week upheld the right of EU companies to
shift activities to another member state, dealing
a blow to trade unions seeking to prevent
so-called social dumping.
However in the same ruling, regarding
a Finnish shipping company’s move to sail
under the Estonian flag, the court also ruled
that unions were allowed to take collective
action to persuade a company not to decamp
to a cheaper location and workforce.
That right, the court in Luxembourg
ruled, only applies where jobs or employment
conditions are “jeopardised or under
serious threat.”
The general ruling resulted from a particular
case involving the London-based International
Transport Workers Federation (ITF)
and the Finnish shipping company.
The federation was unhappy that the Finnish
shipping company, Viking, in a cost-cutting
move, sought in October 2003 to staff
one of its passenger ferries,
the loss-making Rosella,
with a cheaper Estonian crew
and sail it under the Estonian
HOTEL EDEN
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move abroad
to save costs
flag for its Tallinn-Helsinki trips.
The ITF sent a circular to all its affiliates
asking them not to deal with the Viking Line,
with the threat of sanctions attached.
This had the effect of preventing Estonian
trade unions from entering into negotiations
with Viking. After Estonia joined the EU in
2004, Viking brought the case to the British
courts seeking to force the ITF to withdraw
its circular and asking the court to order the
Finnish Seamen’s Union, an ITF affiliate, to
honour its right to reflag the ferry.
Britain’s Court of Appeal referred the
case to the European Court of Justice which
ruled Tuesday that the union action amounted
to “restrictions on the freedom of establishment
... (which) cannot be objectively
justified.
“Such a restriction can be accepted only
if it pursues a legitimate aim such as the protection
of workers,” the court said, throwing
it back to the British courts to decide whether
the collective action went “beyond what
was necessary.”
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agence france-presse
The Czech government said late last
week it had canceled a 798-mln-euro
($1.17-bln) light tank contract with
Austria’s Steyr-Daimler-Puch.
“The contract has not been properly
fulfilled and within the timeframe
agreed” and accordingly it was cancelled
on Monday, Defense Minister
Vlasta Parkanova told a news conference.
The contract, one of the largest
ever in Czech military history, was
for the supply of 199 Panur tanks.
The tanks already built had not
passed control tests and “there were a
whole series of problems,” Parkanova
said, without giving further details.
“The terms of the contract are
confidential,” she said, while adding
that the delivery of the first 17 tanks
in November as agreed had not happened.
“Our decision may seem radical at
first but we are convinced it is right.
Any concession [on the terms] on our
part would have only led to others,”
the minister said.
The local office of Steyr-Daimler-
Puch declined to comment, wanting
first to study the statement.

8 The Krakow Post
B U S I N E S S
R E G I O N A L B I Z
Czech unemployment rate
falls to nine-year low
The Czech unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent
in November from 5.8 percent in October to
the lowest level for nine years, the Ministry of Labor
and Social Affairs announced early last week.
The number of workers seeking and able to take up
jobs immediately fell to 312,558, a drop of 8,082
compared with the figure the previous month, the
office said.
Analysts had expected November’s unemployment
rate to dip to 5.7 percent. (AFP)
Blast hits Russia-EU gas
pipeline: report
An explosion late last week in Ukraine knocked
out of service one of the main pipelines exporting
Russian natural gas to the EU, the Russian Vesti
television news channel reported overnight. The
explosion, which cut the pipeline carrying Siberian
gas through Ukraine to Germany and other
EU clients, forced the operators to suspend the
flow on the pipeline. However, there would be no
interruption in the deliveries to the EU, a source
in the Ukrainian government quoted by the channel
assured.
“One of the Ukrainian gas grid’s specifics is in
its multiple branches, which allow us to re-route
gas around the hit section,” the source said.
There were no reports of casualties or injuries.
The pipeline had suffered a similar incident earlier
this year, when a blast ripped off a section and
it took 10 days to repair the damage. (AFP)
Slovak industrial production
rises 17.3 percent in October
Slovak industrial output rose 17.3 percent in
October on a 12-month comparison following a
revised 15.3 percent in September, the Slovak Statistics
Office announced late last week.
Output from the key auto sector, Slovakia’s
three major car plants, Volkswagen, PSA Peugeot
Citroen and South Korea’s Kia Motors, was one of
the major factors fueling the rise, with production
up 59.8 percent on a 12-month comparison.
Over the first 10 months of the year industrial
production had climbed 14.4 percent compared
with the same period last year. (AFP)
Czech inflation at six-year
high of 5.0 percent
Czech inflation rose to 5.0 percent in November
on a 12-month comparison from 4.0 percent
in October, the highest level since August 2001,
the Czech Statistical Office reported early this
week. More expensive food and non-alcoholic
drink were the main factor fuelling the price rise
with inflation in this category at 10.4 percent on a
yearly comparison.
“Double digit year on year growth in this division
was last recorded more than 11 years ago,”
the office added.
Prices rose by 0.9 percent in November compared
with October following a 0.6 percent rise in
October compared with the previous month.
Czechs are bracing themselves for a raft of
price rises in January as value added tax is increased
across a range of goods in response to the
center-right government moves to switch the tax
burden from direct to indirect taxes. (AFP)
Latvia continues sharp
growth in Q3
The Latvian economy continued its breakneck
growth in the third quarter, expanding 10.9 percent
compared with a year earlier, official data
showed late last week.
In the first and second quarters of this year,
the economy grew 11.2 percent and 11.0 percent
respectively, giving a marginal slowdown in the
three months to September.
In 2006, the economy boomed with 11.9 percent
growth, the fastest rate since independence
from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991 and the
strongest rate in the then 25-member EU.
Growth has been fuelled largely by robust
domestic consumption, particularly since Latvia
joined the EU in 2004.
On the downside, Latvian authorities are struggling
to stem rising inflation, which has sparked
regular warnings about overheating.
In October, 12-month inflation hit 13.2 percent,
which was the highest figure since November
1996. (AFP)
krakowpost.com
Arriva PPC
launches
private
Polish
railway
cc:sa:Solaris8315
the krakow post
The British-Polish company Arriva PCC has begun operating
the first privately owned railway in Poland.
Until Arriva PCC began carrying passengers in northwest
Poland on Dec. 10, Polish National Railways was the
country’s only rail operation. Passengers hope the new company
will be both cheaper than Polish National Railways
and have better on-time performance.
Arriva PCC is a partnership of Britain’s Arriva and Poland’s
PCC. The two companies teamed up last year.
A key attraction for Arriva was the fact that the Polish
government had already granted PCC a private-railway operating
license, according to Gazeta Prawna.
Arriva PCC won a bidding process in June 2007 to serve
passengers in the Pomeranian and Kujawy districts. To help
Arriva PCC start its service, local government officials in
those districts gave it 13 passenger cars.
The company also bought two new luxury cars at a total
cost of 15 mln zloty. The maker, Bydgoszcz-based PESA
Bydgoszcz SA, is the only European company providing
luxury passenger cars to Ukrainian Railways.
To round out its fleet, Arriva PCC is refurbishing 30 cars
that had been used on Denmark’s railways. It expects them
to be ready at the beginning of 2008.
Arriva PCC will serve four stations to start with – Bydgoszcz,
Torun, Chojnice and Czersk. It wants to increase that
number as time goes by.
The new company employs about 120.
Arriva is a big player in Europe’s rail market. Its 12,000
trains provide more than one bln passenger journeys a year.
It has 30,000 employees.
PCC Rail Holding consists of 12 Polish and foreign companies
that specialize in railway transportation logistics.
ANNOUNCEMENT
International Women’s
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www.iwak.pl
iwak_krakow@yahoo.com
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Telekomunikacja Polska to
separate its retail sector by mid-2008
the krakow post
An announcement was made on
Monday stating that a decision will
be made concerning the separation of
the Telekomunikacja Polska sectors
by mid 2008.
Anna Strezynska, director of the
Urzad Komunikacji Elektronicznej
(the Electronic Communication Office
– UKE), made the announcement
on TVN CNBC early this week. She
stated that the decision to separate
Telekomunikacja Polska would be
made by mid-year, while analytical
research will be conducted throughout
the beginning of 2008 to determine
what benefits the separation will
bring to the consumer and to the company.
Strezynska also added the current
discussions are more concerned
with separating the operational, rather
than the structural, elements of the
company.
According to Gazeta Prawna most
experts are of the view the structural
process should be made separate
from the operational element. The operational
element includes retail and
wholesale, which, according to analysts,
should function separately from
the structural side of the telecommunication
company. The biggest single
share holder in Telekomunikacja Polska
is France Telecom with 47.5 percent
of the shares in the company.
Some 3.87 percent of the shares
are owned by the state, while the remaining
48.6 percent are owned by
various other private shareholders.
Telekomunikacja Polska made a debut
on the Warsaw Stock Exchange
in 1998. Strezynska has assured she
is supporting the separation of the
operational element of the company.
After analyzing the pros and cons of
the decision, Telekomunikacja Polska
will not want to make a decision
that is against the European Commission,
which has supported the
option of separating the operational
element of the company, according
to Strezynska.
Although restructuring may be
in the cards for the company, it is a
decision which will be more time
consuming and involve a higher level
of risk. According to the UKE’s director,
restructuring could take up to
four years.
A separation in the operational element
in Telekomunikacja Polska will
mean a separation of the units responsible
for the company’s retail sector.
Separation would mean Telekomunikacja
Polska would have to operate
its retail sector by playing the same
rules as those played by other operators
on the market.
Warsaw to spend 4.5
bln zloty for Euro 2012
LUK Agency
the krakow post
The upcoming European Football
Championships Euro 2012, which
will be hosted by Poland, will lead to
an investment boom in Warsaw. The
city will be announcing its major tenders
early next year, with one already
set for this December.
According to Gazeta Prawna, the
city is planning to expand its one line
metro to a second line. The estimated
cost of the development would be 3
bln zloty.
Gazeta Prawna reports Deputy
Mayor of Warsaw Jacek
Wojciechowski has announced the
capital will experience an investment
boom as far as tenders are concerned.
The biggest projects will be announced
next year, with their completions
by 2009-2012.
The city is estimating a 4.5 bln zloty
cost associated with the Euro 2012
investments. Seven major projects are
anticipated, including the new metro
line as well as upgrading the Legia
Football Club stadium. The remaining
five projects are set to improve
the infrastructure around the capital
at an estimated cost of 1.25 bln zloty.
According to Wojciechowski, as
reported by Gazeta Prawna, the upcoming
expenditures will be labeled
as Euro 2012 investments.
This is a precautionary measure to
prevent projects lapsing beyond mandatory
deadline for completion and
eliminating the possibility of contractors
asking for time extensions.
The city of Warsaw will be looking
to the biggest construction companies
for offers. One contractor will be
held responsible for the overall construction.
That company will in turn
enter into contracts and agreements
with subcontractors for the projects’
completion.

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 B U S I N E S S
The Krakow Post 9
Consultancy agencies to fight for customers in
2008 when more EU funds become available
GDFL 1.2:M.Minderhoud
Krauze’s Polnord
to build in
St. Petersburg
the krakow post
Regional councils responsible for the
distribution of EU funds for the period
2007-2013 will announce, according to
Gazeta Prawna, the first lot of competitions
for the best business plans in the first
quarter of 2008. The application process
will commence earlier. Companies seeking
to win are looking for help to outside agencies
that specialize in getting EU funds.
Within the years 2004-2006 the most efficient
agencies in the field were Faber Consulting
and Ernst & Young.
The general atmosphere from larger
companies is to pay a specialist agency
rather than waste time on procedures usually
foreign to the business entrepreneur.
According to Gazeta Prawna, smaller
business plans competing for amounts between
200,000 to 300,000 zloty, are better
off preparing their plans themselves rather
than seek consultancy companies. Przemyslaw
Sulich, director of a consultancy
agency A1 Europe, points out the agencies
do not only assist in writing up the application
documentation. Agencies can also double-check
if all relevant information passed
on to the funding committee is in order, or
they can help in training an employer or
employees in EU funding matters.
The risk involved in contracting a consultant
today is not similar to that of the
time when Poland entered the EU. Once
the Union opened its doors to Poland and
its funding possibilities, thousands of inexperienced
consultancy firms flooded
the market with promises of quick gains
of EU funds. The result was a myriad of
applications that had little or no chance of
succeeding, with even the most basic information
erroneously entered on forms.
Currently the Polish market is equipped
with consultants who match the consultancy
giants with the experience and skill. Client
care is a priority with consultants being
able to spend more time with their client
portfolios individually.
The upcoming year will mean a feverous
battle among consultancy agencies
for a new client base. The end result will
not be dissimilar to that of Western Europe,
where only a few agencies survived
the competition. The customer will
be seeking the lowest prices on the
market and many of the agencies
will be unable to compete.
the krakow post
The Polish-owned construction company
Polnord, a subsidiary of Prokom,
owned by mogul Ryszard Krauze is set
to commence on a large scale construction
project in St. Petersburg.
Gazeta Prawna reports, Polnord
signed a preliminary contract with the
Moscow-based company OAO Ruskie
Samocwiety late last week. The St. Petersburg
construction project is estimated
to be worth $800 mln.
The Polish-owned company along
with its Moscow-based partner will
construct an office complex of approximately
250 square meters, with offices
later being made available for lease. The
land upon which the offices will be constructed
is owned by the Russian OAO
Ruskie Samocwiety.
The building plans show the office
building construction will be situated in
the center of St. Petersburg at a major
communication crossroad close to the
major train station and the metro station.
The area is also close to the shopping
district hub.
Both parties to the project have agreed
on a three-month period in which architectural
projects will be completed. The
time allocated will also be spent on finalizing
financial plans for the construction
as well as carrying out market research
for the investment.
Polnord, a subsidiary of Prokom is
owned by Ryszard Krauze, a Polish
software mogul who made his fortune
in the early nineties. Krauze, originally
from Sopot, began his software business
in 1991, beginning with an accountancy
program which was bought up by stateowned
mining companies for their bookkeeping
requirements.
Prokom later won the tender in 1993
for setting up software for the stateowned
news agency company Ruch and
by 1996 for Telekomunikacja Polska.
Prokom was responsible for establishing
a software program that would manage
the TP business structure.
Later projects included software for
ZUS (the state-owned social security
agency) and PZU (the insurance company).
Krauze has often been labeled as
a monopolizer of state tenders. Critics
believe Krauze has been responsible for
various activities involving corruption
and bribing officials and politicians in
order to win project tenders.
Should a final decision be made as to
the St. Petersburg project, a new company
will be established to manage the
project.
The co-partners will be the Russian
OAO Ruskie Samocwiety and a new
subsidiary of Polnord with 50 percent
of its shares in the umbrella company.
A final announcement will be made by
June 2008.
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10 The Krakow Post
W A R S A W
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Digital
headhunter
Skyscraper to tower over Poland
GFDL.1.2:Janusz J.
Security system in Warsaw.
the krakow post
Criminals – it doesn’t matter if they are
from the U.S., France, Germany, Poland or
anywhere else – use the newest technology,
including Internet and computers.
To fight them, police must use the same
high-tech equipment.
Warsaw authorities have decided to test
and perhaps buy a new system that allows
the computer to recognize faces of pedestrians
recorded by monitoring cameras.
Here’s how it works: The digital monitoring
photos are reworked by the computer
system.
The faces of the pedestrians are scanned
and compared with faces in the police data
base.
The computer detects individual, characteristic
features like intervals between eyes,
ears and nose, etc., to make a geometrical
map of a face.
Then a computer program compares it
with pictures of “wanted” criminals, which
were also analyzed carefully.
The most difficult challenge for the scientists
was to “teach” the computer how to
recognize those characteristic features of a
face in every circumstance, such as a different
haircut, mimicry, beard or make-up.
Systems like these are expensive, but
they can be worth it as they help to make
video monitoring, which also costs a lot of
money, more useful.
An officer usually is able to watch a
monitoring screen carefully for 20 to 30
minutes.
The computer works all day long with the
same efficiency and precision. If the system
points out a suspect, it is never 100 percent
correct. But for the police it is enough to
check the suspect’s ID to confirm that he is
indeed a wanted criminal.
The police hope Warsaw authorities
decide to buy this system. “We run many
extradition cases in which the most difficult
thing is to pinpoint a wanted man’s
location,” said John Bienkowski, the FBI’s
representative in Poland.
“A system like this would do it faster and
cheaper than traditional methods,” he told
the daily newspaper Dziennik.
The digital headhunter already has been
working successfully in Great Britain. Airports
in the U.S. also have started to use it.
Tests of the headhunter will be done in Poland
next year.
Warsaw authorities have applied for EU
grants to help finance the system.
It is estimated that it would cost 230
mln zloty to install the digital headhunter
in Warsaw.
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the krakow post
The Palace of Culture and Science, the
tallest building in Warsaw and in all of
Poland, is set to be overshadowed in four
years’ time. A consortium led by Jan Kulczyk,
one of Poland’s richest people, plans
to build a 282.4-meter-high skyscraper,
which would be the tallest building in
continental Europe.
According to the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita,
the skyscraper will be located
in the very center of the Polish capital, just
a few steps from the 230 meters-high palace
built in 1955.
The new building will have 68 floors
filled with luxury apartments for sale and
a hotel. The name of the building remains
unknown, but it is likely to include one of
the major worldwide hotel chain brands.
The design for the skyscraper hasn’t yet
started, and it‘s unknown who will do it.
Usually, ventures like this hire the world’s
most famous architects to gain credibility
and quality and thus summon investors
and clients.
the krakow post
Budget plans for next year suggest an
additional one billion zloty will be spent
on the judiciary. The Minister of Justice
has also suggested regulation is needed to
improve the status of judges.
From July 1, 2008, a new statute is being
enacted which will raise the artificial
wage basis upon which judges’ salaries
are decided.
His Honor Slawomir Rozycki from the
Ministry of Justice told Gazeta Prawna,
the new budget will also extend to creating
more positions for support staff required
in the running of the judiciary. This will
include 800 judges’ associates’ positions
as well as 1,500 court staff and 200 support
officers. According to Rozycki, the
reason behind the creation of additional
job vacancies is to lessen the workload of
judges, who should only be concentrating
on handing down judgments and not other
administrative matters. The court process
is to become more efficient.
Among the new positions created, there
are no plans to increase judiciary posts.
The only increase in additional judges will
be seen in the 293 law graduates who are
completing their judicial exams and practical
training.
The estimated amount spent in next
year’s budget on the judiciary is 9.5 bln
zloty, a 12 percent increase to this year’s
budget. The budget for 2007 was one million
zloty less than the predicted budget
for next year.
Although the judiciary as a whole is
pleased with the changes and the additional
money, most claim the step is not big
enough to put a stop to the large number
of good judges leaving their posts.
Currently judges receive wage increases
every seven years. This period will be
reduced to five years as of July next year.
According to Gazeta Prawna, the problem
lies in wages allocated to young judges
who are just starting their profession.
Stanislaw Dabrowski, president of the
National Judicial Council, reminds that
According to the plans, the building will
cost 1 bln zloty (278 bln euro), with construction
to start by the end of 2009 and
completion scheduled in 2011. Chmielna
Development, a company owned by Kulczyk,
will cover only 9 percent of the cost.
The rest is to be financed by banks.
The current tallest European building
is the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt,
Germany (258.7 meters not including antenna
on the top). The Warsaw structure
will be 260 meters high, topped by a 22.4-
meter spire.
But it’s already known that by the time
the Warsaw skyscraper is complete, the
new London Bridge Tower will exceed its
height. The 310-meter London building
should be finished by the end of 2009.
Currently, Warsaw has 14 buildings
higher than 100 meters.
The tallest is still the Palace of Culture
and Science, which was built between
1952 and 1955 as a gift of the Soviet
Union to Communist Poland. It became
one of symbols of the city even if many
consider it an awful example of social realism
in architecture.
Today, skyscrapers are also being
planned and built in other major cities in
Poland. Leszek Czarnecki, the richest Pole
according to the most recent “Forbes”
ranking, is investing in a residential building
in Wroclaw called Sky Tower. It will
be 258 meters high and should be ready
by 2010.In Gdynia, two 138-meter Sea
Towers are already at an advanced level
of construction and will be opened in February
2009.
They will contain luxury apartments
and are located close to the coast. In nearby
Gdansk, a 202-meter skyscraper called
Big Boy is to be finished in 2011.
In Krakow, plans for a skyscraper district
are being discussed by architects and
local authorities.
It would be located close to Czyzyny
in Nowa Huta, far away from the city
center in order not to disrupt the architectural
balance of the old town. For now, the
tallest building in Krakow is Blekitek on
Rondo Grzegorzeckie at 105 meters and
20 floors.
Judges to earn more nationwide
judges who are at the start of their careers
are usually in their early 30s at – an age
when they are beginning to have families
and major financial responsibilities.
And it is this group of judges who are
mostly discriminated by the wage allocation
directives.
Dabrowski suggests young judges’
wages should be comparable to the average
wage in the private sector.
Currently judges’ wages are decided on
an artificial scale, which calculates base
wages.
To solve this problem and to raise the
earning power of a judge on a market
that is quickly increasing average wages
across the board is to somehow balance
the wages of a judge to that of the average
earnings on the market.
According to judges, to retain a high
level within the judiciary and to solve
the chronic problem of judges leaving
the bench to enter private practice, wages
would have to increase to around 12,000
zloty per month.

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 K R A K O W
The Krakow Post 11
Plaque commemorates Wladyslaw Szpilman
Kinga Rodkiewicz
Staff Journalist
A plaque to commemorate the great
Polish pianist and composer Wladyslaw
Szpilman was unveiled in Sosnowiec
Dec. 5.
The plaque, made by Stanislaw Wozniak
and Arkadiusz Koniusz, was placed
in the tenement house in which the Szpilman
family lived before World War II.
“A good thing for us (not for him, as
one has to admit) that Wladyslaw Szpilman,
our Cole Porter, Gershwin, McCartney,
was born in Poland,” said Wojciech
Kilar, composer of movie music.
“Szpilman’s songs evoke the sound of
an era of elegance, of good manners, of
gracious women and of jazz music.”
Also dedicated to the composer is part
of the main square in Sosnowiec, where
local authorities have placed a piano that
automatically plays Szpilman compositions.
Works by Wladyslaw Szpilman include
Waltz in the Olden Style (1936) for
orchestra, Concertino (1940) for piano
and orchestra, Little Overture (1968) for
orchestra.
In the 1950s, he wrote about 40 children’s
songs, for which he received an
award from the Polish Composers Union
in 1955.
In 1961, he initiated and organized Sopot
International Song Festival in Poland
and founded the Polish Union of Authors
of Popular Music.
The pianist was born in Sosnowiec in
1911.
After early piano lessons with his
mother Esthera, he continued his piano
studies in the early 1930s at the Warsaw
Conservatory under A. Michalowski and
at the Academy of Arts (Akademie der
Künste) in Berlin under Artur Schnabel
and Leonid Kreutzer. He also studied
composition with Franz Schreker.
On April 1, 1935, he joined Polish
Radio, where he worked as a pianist
performing classical and jazz music. His
career was abruptly broken off by Germany’s
attack on Poland in 1939.
He and his family, with all people of
Jewish roots, were forced to move to the
Ghetto, where he continued to work as a
pianist in the restaurants of the Ghetto.
When the rest of his family was deported
to Treblinka, an extermination camp in
the east, Szpilman managed to flee from
the transport loading site with the help
of a friend, who grabbed him from the
crowd and took him away from the waiting
train.
None of his family members survived
the war. As set out in his memoir, Szpilman
found hiding places in Warsaw and
survived with the help of friends from
Polish Radio and by a German captain,
Wilm Hosenfeld, whose real name Szpilman
discovered in the early 1950s, when
Hosenfeld’s wife wrote him a letter.
Despite the efforts of Szpilman and
other Poles to rescue Hosenfeld, he died
in Soviet captivity in 1952.
Outside Poland, Szpilman is widely
known as the protagonist of the Roman
Polanski film “The Pianist: The Extraordinary
True Story of One Man’s Survival
in Warsaw, 1939-1945, by Wladyslaw Szpilman,”
recounting how he survived the
Holocaust.
Krakow without barriers
сс:sa:Mohylek
New Year
competition
among cities
the krakow post
Krakow may become a friendlier city
for the disabled. The City Council hopes
to adapt the city to the needs of disabled
people through technical improvements.
The first discussion will take place during
December’s City Council session. Krakow
is an old town with old architecture.
With each step we encounter stairs, gates
with high entry portals and steps down to
many cellars.
Museums, offices, schools and other institutions
are situated in old buildings not
easily accessible for wheelchairs. Apartments
built in the 1970s are equipped with
elevators which are situated above ground
level and accessible only by climbing a
flight of stairs.
Pawel Sularz, an author of a new project
on removing barriers, says the most
important improvements needed are those
that deal with public transportation and the
ability of disabled people to board trams.
A few years ago, Krakow introduced
low-floor buses and trams to assist children
and the elderly in addition to the disabled.
Now the City Council is planning to install
in all trams devices which announce
the next stop; the blind will be equipped
with personal vehicle identifications, giving
signs of approaching cars, and convex
maps with Braille descriptions.
The next barrier to fall will be the curb
stones that obstruct wheelchairs. There
must be a compromise, however. Completely
flat surfaces are best for wheelchairs.
But the blind prefer different levels
for sidewalk and street that they can detect
with their walking sticks. Jan Otryl, a member
of the Blind Union in Malopolska, has
other complaints. Timetables at bus stops
Quality Accommodation for Less
TOURNET
Guest Rooms
ul. Miodowa 7
Kazimierz District, Krakow
Tel.: (0) 12 292-0088
www.accommodation.krakow.pl
are too high, and people with vision defects
cannot read them. There are too few traffic
lights with sound signals.
The disabled would also like to see in
Krakow the Wien system that has been
used in Lodz, Bydgoszcz and Poznan. The
system was invented in Wien to give the
blind remote controllers similar to those for
cars. They switch them on when they hear
an approaching tram. Near the tram’s door
is a chip which reacts to the remote controller
signal and announces the tram number
and its direction.
In the budget proposed for 2008, one
mln zloty would be spent on removing barriers.
Some things can be done during new
construction, too, such as building ramps
when building stairs. And some improvements
cost nothing, such as hanging a street
name plate a bit lower so that it can be seen
by people in wheelchairs.
CALL TO
ADVERTISE:
Andrzej Kowalski,
Marketing Manager,
+48 (0) 798-683-160
Urszula Ciolkiewicz
Staff Journalist
The biggest Polish cities are competing
for the title of the best New Year’s party
organizer. Television stations are participating
in the parties in Krakow and Wroclaw.
Thanks to TV support, the budgets
for these parties are as high as 3 mln and
5 mln zloty.
Last year’s New Year’s parties attracted
100,000 participants in Wroclaw and more
than 140,000 in Krakow. Warsaw’s party
costs 5 mln zloty, while Lodzspends only
250,000 zloty.
The Warsaw party will be televised on
TVN. In front of the Palace of Culture and
Science we will have the opportunity to
see, among others: Tatiana Okupnik, Kasia
Kowalska, Lady Pank, T. Love, Bracia,
Feel, Jet Set and Zygmunt Kukla Orchestra.
Warsaw’s New Year’s party will be
transmitted from 20:00 to 01:00 from what
promises to be a gorgeous stage design.
There wasn’t any party in Warsaw the two
previous years because the City Council
feared the risk of a terrorist attack and because
of a lack of regulations governing
mass audience events.
Last year’s New Year’s party in Krakow
had the biggest TV audience of all. “It was
watched by one out of three Poles,” said
Agata Mlynarska of Polsat TV. This year
is supposed to be even better. Last year’s
TV program lasted for five hours, and this
year’s will be longer. “We hope to promote
Krakow as a modern and beautiful city,”
said Mlynarska. According to organizers
and the Polsat channel, the success of the
party is guarantied by both the participants
and the TV program.
Krakow has invited, among others:
Shakina Stevensa, Lou Bega, Boney M.,
Bajm, Budka Suflera, Czerwone Gitary,
Golecu Orkiestra, grupa Kashmir, Vox,
Urszula and Szymon Wydra. After midnight
the audience will hear a classical
singing concert by Andrzej Lampert and
Alicja Wegorzewska-Whiskerd.
Wroclaw vows not to be outdone.
“We decided to show the party on
five huge TV screens,” said Malgorzata
Wojciechowska, a Wroclaw City Council
official. “We are preparing a professional
fireworks show as well,” she added.
Partygoers and party watchers should
remember two important conditions for a
successful celebration: delightful company
and morning headache pills.
krakowpost.com

12 The Krakow Post
K R A K O W
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
New low cost route Krakow-Paris
the krakow post
The low-cost French-Dutch airline Transavia has begun flying
between Krakow and Paris.
Transavia’s Vice President Helene Abraham said it is the
airline’s only route to Poland. And it will remain that way, the
Polish Press Agency said.
The reason is that Transavia’s parent, Air France-KLM, does
not want the low-cost carrier competing with it on other routes.
Air France-KLM already serves the rest of Poland’s major cities.
“Thanks to the new connection, French people will be able
to discover this beautiful city, and we will take Polish people
to the capital of France as well,”Abraham told the Polish Press
Agency.
The airline’s Boeing 737-800s have 186 seats. They fly to
Krakow three times a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays.
Krakow’s French consul, Pascal Vagogne, predicts that the
new connection will make Krakow more popular with French
tourists. Only 8 percent of the city’s tourists last year were
French, the Polish Press Agency said.
Transavia is the 21st carrier to serve the Krakow- Balice airport.
Last year the facility handled 2.4 mln passengers.
Transavia offers 67 flights a week from Paris to a dozen destinations,
including cities in Italy , Spain, Greece, Morocco and
Tunisia. It has about 164 employees.
LUK Agency
AGH makes student
hostels comfortable
LUK Agency
Iwona Bojarczuk
Staff Journalists
AGH University of Science and Technology
plans a renovation of its dormitories
that will transform the current 10-person
units with one shared bathroom into twoperson
units with private bathrooms.
It will be a huge project because AGH
has more dorm rooms than any university
in the city. The dorms accommodate up to
4,000 students in each of the fall and spring
semesters.
Cost of the renovation is estimated at
7 mln to 8 mln zloty per four-story dorm.
With five buildings, the overall cost will be
about 36 mln zloty.
The AGH campus has 20 student hostels.
There are plans to rebuild five hostels,
starting with buildings: 16, 17, 1, 5, 9. The
total number of buildings that will undergo
reconstruction is not known.
The Ministry of Education will be providing
much of the money for the work.
The university is making the changes
partly because good deals in the privateapartment
rental market are luring students
away from the dorms. Some students
would rather pay more than they would pay
for dorm rooms for newer and more private
accommodations.
Right now each dorm unit has four
rooms, some of which accommodate three
students and some two. The four rooms are
connected to a collective bathroom, which
contains two sinks, one shower and one
toilet.
In the new setup, each unit in the dormitories
will have two rooms plus a bathroom.
Units will accommodate one or two
students.
Each of the new units will also have a
small kitchen.
Although the two-person units will end
such traditions as talking with others during
tooth-brushing and sock-washing sessions,
students want better accommodations, said
Faculty of Materials Science and Ceramics
student Caroline.
The new rooms will also have better furnishings,
university officials say. The old
military-style steel-framed beds will be out,
as will bunk beds – unless students in a unit
demand a bunk bed.
The new furniture will be modern and attractively
designed instead of just functional,
said Chancellor Henryk Ziolo. If some
students want to use a bunkbed to free up
more space in their room, they can certainly
do that, he said. Renovating the dorms
will not only benefit students, but also summer
tourists on limited budgets. AGH rents
dorm rooms to tourists in summer, becoming
the largest “hotel” in Krakow. Half of
its guests are foreigners.
The university will renovate its oldest
buildings first. Dorms buildings 16 and 17
should be ready before the holiday break
next year.

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Celebrating the year of
Stanislaw Wyspianski
the krakow post
The year 2007 is the hundredth anniversary
of the death of Stanislaw Wyspiański,
one of the most intriguing and broad-minded
Polish artists.
The phenomenon of Wyspainski consisted
of his versatile activity, fascinating even today
because of the variety of concepts employed
during his short 38 years of life.
He studied at Krakow’s School of Arts
(1884-1885 and 1887-1895) and at Jagiellonian
University (1887-1890 and 1896-1897).
As a student he helped Matejko (together
with J. Mehoffer) to create polychromes of
Mariacki Church (1889-1890). His creative
activity, realized mainly through pastel technique
(portraits, landscapes, flowers) was
dominated by symbolism and the secession
style. The main means of expression was
a twining line along a contour of depicted
items, which were marked through colored
stains. His polychrome projects and stained
glasses characterized the motif of blazing
flame and calligraphically treated plants.
In literature he is known as one of the best
drama writers, especially tragedies.
Referring to ancient tragedy, he showed
the role of fate as a main motive of action,
often localized in national historical reality.
In the late period of his artistic activity (from
1900), apart from historical and political
polemics against contemporary life (among
others “The Wedding,” “Liberation”), there
appeared a trend to philosophically interpret
Polish history (“The Legion,” “Boleslaw
Smialy,” “November Night”) and to show
mythological stories (“The Odys Return”).
Wyspianski was not submissive; he could
be classified as incorrigible and a rude artist.
For almost all his short life (he suffered
from syphilis) he fought against parochial
styles of thinking and middle-class conformism.
Stanislaw Wyspianski died on Nov. 28,
1907 and his funeral in Deserved Crypt at the
Church on the Rock became a huge national
demonstration.
The 100th anniversary of his death is the
occasion of several artistic events at the National
Museum in Krakow: exhibitions, theater
plays, multimedia shows. There also are
lectures and books about Wyspianski and his
artistic activity.
The main building of Krakow’s National
Museum has an exhibition entitled “Stanislaw
Wyspianski’s Great Theater.”
The multimedia show runs through March
2 and features static and motion pictures,
sounds and light, etc. Video screenings include
parts of theater, television and film
adaptations of Wyspianski’s dramas. Exhibition
visitors can stand inside scenery reconstructing
the scene from the premiere of “The
Wedding,” built according to the author’s
stage direction. Janusz Walek, creator and
custodian of the exhibition, says that the unusual
character of the show casts a spell on
visitors, expanding their imagination and allowing
them to see Wyspianski as a whole.
Through March 9, the National Museum
will display at a Szolayski tenement house
in ul. Szczepanska 11 an exhibition entitled
“You Pile the Stake Yourself…” The idea is
to remind visitors of the ceremonial funeral
of the artist and at the same time Krakow’s
last huge funeral ceremony organized by the
city council.
Laznia Nowa, a theater in the Nowa Huta
District, joined the celebration of the anniversary.
A music-theater festival, “Wyspianski
Liberates,” showed Wyspianski’s other faces
and ran from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2.
Also at the festival was a poster display
covering more than 30 billboards with such
slogans as “Krakow is not enough developed!”
and “I was beaten and that is why I
won.” The festival also included a play directed
by Paul Passini, “Resting,” and concerts in
which artists challenged Wyspianski’s texts.
“We do not want to embalm a mummy; we
will not close Wyspianski in a crypt” said the
artistic director of Laznia Nowa. “He was a
Pole who tore off the comfortable masks of
A R T S & I D E A S The Krakow Post 13
his compatriots. He was frustrated, furious
and defiant.”
Another exhibition worth mentioning
is “Stanislaw Wyspianski in the Art of the
Disabled.” It is at Kotlownia, the Gallery of
Krakow University of Technology in the ul.
Warszawska 24.
The exhibition will continue through Dec.
14 from Monday to Friday at 09:00 to 16:00.
There you can find 105 works made in different
techniques: painting, drawings, graphics,
ceramics, weaving.
The cultural events connected with the
anniversary of Wyspianski’s death are very
popular among foreigners living in Krakow.
“I am delighted by the talent presented by
Wyspianski,” said Inge, a Swedish student
living in Krakow for two years. “I did not
know him before. Now after participating in
two projects and visiting some galleries I will
probably write my MA on the topic of his
nonconformist way of living and creating.”
Local teacher looks to change
face of educational system
From SCHOOL on Page 1
The need to improve rural schools is so pressing
that Klosowski’s reservations are inane, Lackowski
said.
“The deterioration of education in rural areas,
where year after year more and more students
do not pass their exams and thus do not continue
school, is a huge problem,” Lackowski said.
“With school vouchers, there may be three
times more money for rural areas,” he said.
“Vouchers improve the equality of education. Better
teachers should go to rural areas and be better
paid.”
Krakow already has a voucher system but it is
not the kind that Lackowski and Hall envision. It
does not give parents the increase in power and responsibility
that the Lackowski-Hall system would
because it does not allow students to choose their
school. They must go to the one to which they are
assigned.
“It must be changed,” said Jaroslaw Gowin,
a member of the upper house of parliament from
Krakow.
“Otherwise people will become discouraged
about a really good idea.”
The Krakow voucher system does include one
provision of the system that Lackowski and Hall
advocate, however: It bases teachers’ salaries on
the number of students they teach rather than the
number of classes.
Another key difference between the Krakow
voucher system and the system that Lackowski
and Hall want is that Krakow principals have
no authority to manage their schools’ finances.
In other words, they can’t shift money from one
category of expense to a category where there is
a greater need.
National educational officials decide how
much a school gets – and the categories where it
is spent.
By being able to send their child to the school
of the family’s choice, parents would in effect become
managers of public-education funds.
“In such a situation parents show their power
in the educational market,” Lackowski said. “And
the school principal, when talking with parents, is
aware that he is speaking with the co-owners of
the school.”
The Lackowski-Hall system would also improve
teaching by pegging teacher salaries to
classroom effectiveness. Better teachers would get
more money, poorer ones less.
Lackowski said vouchers are a tiny part of the
educational change Poland needs.
Creating public support for reform means convincing
Poles to change the way they think about
education, he said.
“People must see that reform is an opportunity,
not a danger,” he said. The key is getting the public
to understand that “competition improves the level
of education.”
Under a voucher system, the best public schools
wouldn’t have to beg any more for money for elective
courses – those the Education Ministry doesn’t
require. Neither would the best schools have to beg
for money for facility renovations.
Private schools also would be likely to embrace
vouchers. That’s because the voucher system
would allow students to go to either private or public
schools. With money from vouchers, private
schools could reduce the fees they charge parents.
Henryka Bulat of Krakow, the mother of a junior
high school girl, is one parent who likes the
idea of vouchers.
In deciding which school her daughter attends,
she said, the voucher system will let her “take into
account the schools’ achievements.”
They would include the number of students in
a school who had passed their comprehensive exams,
the number of students who had won citywide
or regionwide academic competitions, the number
of electives a school was offering and the condition
of the school facility itself, she said.
“If I can influence the financing of a school,
why not?” she asked.
A Krakow teacher who wanted to remain anonymous
said it is hard for her to predict what would
happen under a voucher system because few details
of the system have been made public.
However, she said, her sense is that “if there is
a good principal who fights for his school then the
level of education (under a voucher system) would
be raised and that would be good for children.”
Without an aggressive principal, however, the
voucher system could cause such “huge problems”
that a school’s quality could diminish rather than
improve, she said.
Lackowski has so far offered no timetable for a
voucher system or other educational reform.
However, he said, “it would be best to introduce
reforms gradually.” In the case of vouchers,
that would mean introducing them “in big cities at
a secondary school level and afterwards gradually
extending them.”
“Vouchers should have been introduced in cities
a long time ago,” he said. “There is no reason to
assign students to schools in specific districts when
it is possible for them to travel by public means.”
Hall said vouchers could show up as early as
2009.
“I am sure that any changes should be introduced
very carefully, gradually and after having
been given thorough consideration,” she said.
Educational reform should be reform and not revolution,
she said.
Many teachers are likely to oppose a voucher
system, of course, because it threatens the way
they do business. Teacher association leaders are
already posturing on the proposed change.
Slawomir Broniarz, the chairman of the Polish
Teachers Union, contends the voucher system
would violate the Constitution in terms of unequal
access to education and also laws on how local
governments spend their money.
Lackowski answers:
“There is no need to change the constitution
because education would still be free,” Lackowski
said. “We need to eliminate the teacher’s card” that
gives teachers too much power over education, he
said. “Poland needs the determination to succeed,
and the question is if Polish politicians will have
that same determination.”
Another teachers union objection is that, in
abolishing the current school assignment system,
the voucher system would create problems that
would be difficult to deal with.
For example, union leaders say, what happens
when many more students want to attend a school
than it can admit?
What would be the criteria for deciding which
students would get into that school and which
would not?
Some student groups dislike the idea of vouchers,
too.
Artur Juszczyk, co-leader of the student organization
Initiative Against Paid Studies, contended
that “the educational voucher is the first step to
privatizing education. We think that education is a
right, not a commodity, so it should not be subject
to the rules of free market.”
Those who are unsure whether the voucher
system will improve schools can get an idea by
looking at what happened in Koszalin, in northern
Poland.
That school system used vouchers to introduce
a journalism class, a ballet class, speech therapists,
psychological counselors and career specialists.
Although vouchers are an interesting idea,
many people in and out of education believe that
whether they will be a success in Poland will hinge
on that old adage “The devil is in the details.”
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krakowpost.com

14 The Krakow Post
K A T O W I C E
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
Xmas crib on main market in Gliwice
the krakow post
Gliwice residents can catch some of the
real Christmas spirit by helping to build a
manger scene on the main market square.
The community effort, which starts tomorrow,
makes it “something special,” said
Dariusz Jezierski, who came up with the
idea. He is director of Gliwice’s National
Theater.
A collective effort to create the manger
scene “will emphasize the community
character of Christmas,” Jezierski said.
A manger, or animal feeding trough, was
where the Bible says Mary placed the baby
Jesus after his birth. It has become a symbol
of Christmas worldwide.
“Right now the best-known manger
scene is in Krakow,” Jezierski said. “Maybe
that will change.”
Many residents have expressed interest
in helping to build the Nativity scene,
including students from the Silesian Polytechnic
Institute in Gliwice. There is still a
need for carpenters and bricklayers, however.
Each volunteer can propose ideas about
the interior of the scene, gifts for the baby
Jesus and the clothes of the main characters,
including Mary and Joseph, shepherds
and the three Wise Men.
During the nine-day construction period,
which will end Dec. 23, the main market
square will be alive with the sights, sounds
and feel of Christmas. Each day, for example,
youth choirs will give Christmas
concerts.
Soloists and theater groups will also
perform, Jezierski said.
A culmination of the festivities will be
Bishop Jan Wieczorek performing a Christmas
Mass at the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral
on Sunday Dec. 23.
Saint Francis of Assisi came up with the
idea of building the first Nativity scene in
the Italian city of Greccio in 1223. The custom
that he started spread throughout the
world.
The Roman Catholic Church’s Franciscans,
an order of monks named for
the saint, were a catalyst in spreading the
manger-scene tradition. They built scenes
wherever they established monasteries.
The Nativity scene is a deep-rooted tradition
in Poland because Franciscans built
their first monasteries here in the 13th Century.
Today, every Roman Catholic church
has a manger scene with Jesus, Mary and
Joseph.
MUSIC LIVE
Hey hits Krakow
the krakow post
Top Polish rock outfit Hey are in Krakow this Saturday
Dec. 15 at Klub Studio as part of their fifteenth anniversary
national tour.
Hey skyrocketed to fame in the early 90s signing with
Izabelin Studio label after being noticed by Katarzyna Kanclerz
at the Jarocin Festival – only one month after the group
formed in 1992.
Their 1993 debut album Fire has been called one of the
most important Polish albums of the 90s.
The combination of vocalist and lyricist Katarzyna
Nosowska with guitarist Piotr Banach, resulted in songs
popular across Poland including Moja i Twoja Nadzieja,
Teksański, or ZazdroSc.
When Fire sold more than a hundred thousand copies in
the first five months, probably no one, including the band,
dreamt that their second release, the 1994 album Ho!, would
achieve even greater success, selling just under a mln copies
in 6 months.
These were the band’s golden years, and though they never
came back, during the next decade Hey have consolidated
their position with excellent albums, such as Karma, Hey
and Echosystem in 2005. Singles from these releases have
hit number one in national charts, and the band continues to
attract a large fan base to their performances.
As part of the band’s anniversary year, they have released
a copy of their live unplugged MTV recording at Roma Theater
in Warsaw this September, with remixes of their most
popular songs and covers of P.J. Harvey and Iggy Pop. The
album Unplugged went gold on the first day.
The national anniversary tour 92-07, is stopping in 12 cities
across Poland with over two hours of on stage time and
all their favorite songs featured in the sets.
Hey will be supported by the indie group Muchy, who
have been called the “Discovery of the year” by Machina
magazine.
Gig info: Klub Studio, ul. Budryka 4 – in the AGH Student
Campus from 19:00, tickets 32-37 zloty from www.ticketpro.
pl or at the club’s ticket office.
ARKA NOEGO
Our restaurant is located
in one of the oldest
buildings in Kazimierz.
We serve all kinds of Jewish
cuisine, based mostly
on local recipes.
Come to enjoy delicious
Jewish dishes.
Live klezmer music
every night at 20:00.
Open daily: 09:00-02:00
ul. Szeroka 2
+48 (12) 4291528
arkaszerok2@op.pl
www.arka-noego.pl
www.
All your favorite
articles online!
krakowpost
.com

DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007
C L A S S I F I E D S
The Krakow Post
BUILDING & REPAIR
ANGLO-POLISH EXPERT BUILDERS
Specialists in Interior Renovations. Quality,
Efficiency and Reliability. In Poland and
Across Europe. References Available.
Please Call: +48 608-849-189
WOODEN HOMES
Companies wanted who can built wooden
houses in Western Europe. pas@fruitier.nl
MEDICAL SERVICES
Medical Service for Foreigners
+48 609-201-372. Since 1990.
GUITAR CATERING
Are you looking for classical guitar music
for your restaurant or gathering. Spanish,
Argentinian and Italian classical music.
guitarcatering@gmail.com
EDITING SERVICES
Need help editing your English-language
texts? Write: media.editing@gmail.com
PRIVATE LESSONS
Lessons in English with native speakers
– journalists. Improve your conversation
skills and grammar through reading, analyzing
and discussing interesting articles.
Decent rates. jerrybarrows@yahoo.com
Learn Russian from native speaker in Krakow.
susanna202001@yahoo.com
NETWORKING
A Dutch businessman is looking to meet
fellow countrymen based in Krakow and
the region for networking, chatting and
generally being cheap together. Write:
namhctud.gniylf.eht@gmail.com
BOOKS
Looking for books of Betrand Russell in
English. anaksymander@wp.pl
I want to find any and all books printed by
Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian publishing
houses, or even old samizdat. I am also
looking for Soviet newspapers and
magazines of sorts and genres.
krichlvivpublications@yahoo.com
APARTMENT FOR RENT
Krakow, Wroclawska Street, 40 sqm,
living room with open kitchen and
bedroom, 3-rd floor/4, lift, extremely high
standard, air conditioning, parking place,
secure. Price: 2200 pln + media.
Mobile: +48 889-659-084
INVESTORS
Looking for those interested in investing
in a growing and successful business in
Poland. Please write: alec_news@mail.ru
CATERING
Interested in trying homemade Russian
pelmeni or Armenian pierogi? Top
Russian chef offers great quality for low
prices. Write: russianchef@gmail.com
PERSONALS
Looking for a HOT time in the middle of
winter?? We’re organizing a New Year’s
Eve party with a climate for swingers.
Krakow area in a modern restaurant/club
with food and drinks and a hot show to
begin with then the party will get started!!
top10magazine@gmail.com
Looking for Russian speakers to hang out,
talk, have a good time. Please write me at:
jamisonmarshall@gmail.com
Searching for lonely depressed people
who are questioning the meaning of life.
yourfavoriteunclebob@gmail.com
Mini Guide
Real Estate
TOWER Estate Agency
Investments, rentals, sales
of residential, lands and
commercial properties.
www.tower-krakow.pl
tower@tower-krakow.pl
Tel.: +48 012 421-9126
Office: 33 Main Square
Taxis
Barbakan
ul. Ks. St. Truszkowskiego 52
(0) 12 683-3599
biuro@barbakan.krakow.pl
www.taxi.barbakan.krakow.pl
Car Rental
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ul. StarowiSlna 13
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tel/fax: 012 429-6630
www.joka.com.pl
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