Parliament accepts 'audit' report

Poland’s previous government wasted PLN 340 billion of taxpayers’ money, Prime Minister Beata Szydło said on Wednesday in a swingeing report to parliament that was criticised by the opposition.

In the night between Wednesday and Thursday, following presentations and a debate in the lower house of Poland's parliament which took most of the day, the Civic Platform (PO) party at the centre of the report, and now the largest party in opposition, filed a motion to dismiss the report.

A total of 151 MPs voted in favour of dismissing the report, 258 voted against, and nine abstained.

In turn, the head of the PO parliamentary caucus, Sławomir Neumann, said a “fair and serious conversation” was needed.

“Fair, not in the sense of having 10 hours for Law and Justice, and half an hour for PO,” he added.

In a string of accusations in the report presented in parliament on Wednesday, the prime minister and ministers took the stand to describe what they said was wide-ranging corruption, surveillance of journalists and general financial mismanagement of the PO-PSL coalition between 2007-2015.

Former Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, of the Civic Platform party, earlier told reporters: "The best audit of the last eight years of the PO-PSL government is above all economic growth, decreasing unemployment and increasing scores in international rankings." (rg/pk)