Poland

Huge crowds may have gathered to oppose ‘Polexit’, but the gauntlet thrown down by the country’s populist government still poses an existential threat to the union.

Pictures emerged showing the winner posing with other models in the colours of the opposition.

Press freedom is under assault across our continent – including the murder of journalists. Misha Glenny reports on how journalism, an essential element of democracy, is threatened.

News that you might have missed from around the continent, selected by Steve Anglesey.

NIGEL WARBURTON, one of the world’s most-read philosophers, on the 'Trolley Problem' and why life is more complex than the theory suggests.

The country’s media is being forced back to the dark days of the Iron Curtain, warns ex-Europe minister DENIS MACSHANE, a former journalist once arrested in Warsaw by the communist authorities

The continent's strangest news, including a colony of rabbits winning a court battle against the French military and an alleged fraudster with a gold toilet

How can pop respond to politics? With this year’s album BRUT, Polish alt-pop star Brodka has provided an object lesson, writes SOPHIA DEBOICK

Why did Britain fall out of love with speedway, and how did Poland take over as the sport’s new spiritual home? Not so long ago, the start of the British speedway season would have been big news. That wasn’t the case this week, when the first of this year’s Covid-delayed league fixtures took place. Speedway was, at one […]

Flags have dominated the news agenda in recent weeks as debates about national identity rumble on. If you’ve only been casually checking into the news – and after the few years we have all had, who could blame you? – you might be forgiven for thinking that the world is suddenly quiet. What other possible reason […]

Despite attempts to bridge it since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the chasm between Eastern and Western Europe remains wide. The pandemic has pushed the two regions even further apart. No-one better embodies the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe from Communism than Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright, dissident and first democratically-elected president of the modern era. […]

An analysis of European populism explores why it has established deepest roots in two former Iron Curtain states. Authoritarian populists almost doubled their share of electoral votes across Europe between 2001 and 2018 – from 11.8% to 22.3%, according to Swedish think-tank the Timbro institute. There was then a decline after, but it is too […]

Lech Walesa helped create modern Poland. Thirty years after he came to power, MICK O’HARE reports on a complex character and his even more complex legacy When Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was re-elected in October 2019 under prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki it was on a ticket of more of the same. More right-wing […]