The European Commission has approved PLN 210 million (EUR 47 million) in state aid to Polish farmers to mitigate the effects of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus announced the news in a post on Twitter yesterday, writing that “under this aid package, the government will grant subsidies for the purchase of seed-sowing materials. Government aid for these subsidies will total PLN 210 million (EUR 47 million).”
Poland has already allocated PLN 15.4 billion (EUR 3.5 billion) to help its farmers deal with the effects of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the agriculture ministry has said.
According to officials, the biggest chunk of aid has been earmarked for subsidies to help Polish farmers purchase fertilizer (PLN 7.3 billion – EUR 1.6 billion) and cash-flow loans (PLN 2.8 billion – EUR 450 million).
Today is day 517 of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Source: Polskie Radio
A massive fire that broke out in a hazardous waste dump near Zielona Góra over the weekend has ignited a nationwide debate on legal and illegal dump sites in Poland.
The blaze, which was reported on Saturday, took some 200 firefighters a full 24 hours to contain. According to officials, over five thousand cubic meters of toxic materials were stored in the warehouse that burnt down, but no one knows what the exact materials were.
Although the fire was contained by Sunday evening, the potential environmental and financial impacts are still being assessed. As Szymon Gajda, president of the Provincial Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in Gdańsk, pointed out in his interview with Radio Gdańsk this morning, the fire in Zielona Góra is one local example of a much larger issue with illegal dump sites and hazardous waste imported into Poland from wealthier European countries.
“Since the 1990s,” Gajda claims, “we have been a garbage dump for Western Europe” under the “polluter pays” principle. He also emphasized the difficulty of tracking down companies responsible for illegal landfills and fires, as “when it comes to environmental protection, we still underestimate organized crime operating in this area.”
The full interview with Gajda (in Polish) is available HERE.
Source: Radio Gdańsk, Polskie Radio
Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa joined regional officials on the pier in Gdańsk Brzeżno yesterday to help inaugurate this year’s ekoTurysta anti-littering campaign.
The social campaign admonishing visitors, “Don’t make a fool of yourself; don’t make a mess,” was developed by the Voivodeship Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management in Gdańsk (WFOŚiGW) to raise awareness of the pervasive littering problem in beaches, lakes, and forests.
An estimated 380 tons of litter and waste is collected annually from beaches in Gdańsk at a cost of over a million złoty.
As Sławomir Mazurek, deputy president of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, explained, trash from holidaymakers is costly for humans and the environment. Plastic bottles, bags, and packaging left on beaches get into the sea, where they become a threat to marine organisms, and decomposing waste releases toxic substances that end up in soils and groundwater.
As part of this year’s anti-littering campaign, students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk created informational posters and exhibited them on the Brzeżno pier. The nonprofit Filmova Foundation also produced a humorous short film to support a related action encouraging locals and guests to use bicycles as an emission-free ecological means of transport.
Photos of the exhibition are available HERE, and a link to the film can be found HERE.
Source: Radio Gdańsk, PAP
The 27th annual International Shakespeare Festival is set to open this week in Gdańsk with two Polish productions inspired by “King Lear” and “The Tempest.”
Directed by Janusz Opryński, Andrzej Seweryn’s actorial essay “Lear” is a monodrama featuring the protagonist of the titular Shakespearean work musing over the events of the original play.
The winner of the ShakespeareOFF 2022 Grand Prize, the performance “How Beauteous Mankind Is” will also open tomorrow evening at Teatr Wybrzeże, featuring a multimedia combination of theater, dance, video, and music.
The festival, which runs from July 26-August 6, features performances in and around the Shakespeare Theatre along with workshops, critics’ debates, concerts, exhibitions, and meetings with artists and actors from around the world.
Theater companies from Spain, Ukraine, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and Poland will offer their interpretation of Shakespearean classics, including variations on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” by the Wrocław Puppet Theatre and the Kyiv National Academic Molodyy Theatre, and a 15-minute opera that is “not really an adaption of ‘Macbeth,’” by the Łódź Kaliska company.
The International Shakespeare Festival was founded by longtime Gdańsk resident Jerzy Limon, an outstanding Polish scholar, writer, and translator who died of COVID-19 in March 2021.
More information on the festival can be found on THEIR WEBSITE.
Source: Radio Gdańsk, gdansk.pl
Weather
Today will start off partly cloudy with a slight chance of rain, with skies clearing off in the afternoon accompanied by a strong breeze from the northwest. Temperatures will be noticeably cooler than yesterday, with a daytime high of 21°C or 70°F, dropping to a low of 13°C or 55°F overnight. Even cooler weather is expected tomorrow, with a chance for more rain Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Elizabeth Peck/aKa
