It's now official. There will be a change of Government in Poland. A turn with a European accent. The Law and Justice party (PiS) lost its absolute majority in Sunday's general elections and will not be able to repeat its term. According to the final results announced by the electoral commission, the only government option will be a tripartite led by the former president of the European Council, Donal Tusk.. After all the constituencies were counted, the PiS reached 35.38% of the votes, while the liberal-conservative electoral alliance Civic Coalition (KO) of the opposition leader, Donald Tusk, obtained 30.7%.

The centrist Third Way obtained 14.4% and New Left 8.61%, leaving the tripartite opposition with 249 seats out of 460.. The PiS has made it clear that it will try to form a Government, but it has no partner and the only formation it could call, although the arithmetic does not work, is the extreme right.. The ultra-nationalist Confederation, which advocates an end to aid to Ukraine and ultra-liberal economic policies, has slipped to fourth place with 7.16%.. The Polish scene is reminiscent of the Spanish one. The winning party in the polls deposited on June 23, the PP, does not have a parliamentary majority.

European airs

Analysts predicted that last Sunday's elections would be the most important in Poland since 1989.. The match was also played in Brussels. The option flagged by the PiS meant the consolidation of the illiberal trend and train-collision with the European Commission that Jaroslaw Kacyniski’s have maintained since their 2015 rise to power. Tusk's alternative involved a completely antagonistic agenda: reconnecting with the community capital, which he knows well after leading the European Council for two terms.

The turn of the helm in Warsaw has been celebrated by the majority of the parliamentary group of the European Parliament, a very unusual scenario. “Very good news. Poles have voted massively to open a new era in the country. No one stands in the way of Poland in its European future,” said Manfred Weber, leader of the European People's Party, the European family of Tusk.. “Poles have voted for change, for stopping the autocratic drift of PiS and for returning Poland to the place it deserves: the heart of Europe,” the Social Democrats celebrated.

Poland's turnaround is good news for the EU. PiS has given Brussels enormous headaches. He refused to respect the refugee reception quotas agreed in 2015 and his controversial reform of the judiciary has undermined the rule of law and undermined the separation of powers. He crossed a red line proclaiming the supremacy of his law over community law. The Polish elections represent an important warning to sailors eight months before the European Parliament elections. The pro-European option has prevailed, something unthinkable years ago when PiS did not have any rival. Meanwhile, the one who will suffer these winds of change is the Hungarian Víktor Orbán, who loses his illiberal dance partner in the affront against Brussels.

There was a time when diplomacy was an art. Disagreements were addressed discreetly in classrooms and offices. The cigar and the glass could be missing, but never the forms. Diplomacy is now a megaphone. It is becoming so mundane and scandalous that there are governments that prefer to bow their heads out of shame rather than call for consultations the ambassadors who make a joke out of pleasure.

Germany knows well what megaphone diplomacy is. He suffered it with the former Ukrainian ambassador, Andrij Melnyk. For two years, until his return to kyiv to occupy the position of deputy foreign minister that he had supposedly earned, Melnyk represented the interests of his country by attacking the foreign. He left no puppet with a head. He accused the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, of thinking like Vladimir Putin. And at a concert organized by Steinmeier in memory of the victims of the Ukrainian war, he left him hanging because there were no Ukrainian musicians in the orchestra and the program was by enemy composers.. Logically, always looking for the maximum echo on social networks.

The German authorities silently swallowed one toad after another. He let the guest Melnyk impose the rules of the game and its narrative. It was only brought to attention once, as far as we know, but it was not through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but in a conversation with the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), that of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Israel has it easier. Germany's past acts as a gag in itself and there are no cracks in the Executive. The media are something else, but it is difficult to put doors into the field when megaphone diplomacy becomes inquisitive.

The latest podcast by journalist Markus Lanz and philosopher Richard David Precht, both well-known in this country, is preceded by a statement from the latter. He claims that in the previous podcast “wording was used that caused offense and drew criticism, including from the Israeli embassy. And of course we don't want that and we are very sorry.”. Above all, “because the statement in question did not remotely have the intention attributed to it.”

In that episode of Lanz & Precht they talked about Israel and the Hamas attack, but also about Judaism. At one point in the conversation, the philosopher mentioned that Jews are prohibited from working on Saturdays, “except for some things like the diamond trade and some financial transactions.”

Criticism of Precht did not wait. The Israeli embassy in Berlin wrote in X: “Dear Richard David Precht, if you have no idea about Judaism, it is better to say nothing about it than to rehash old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”

The German-Israeli Society and the board of the Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany joined the attack. They spoke of a “slap in the face of the Jewish community in Germany” and stressed that, in view of Precht's statements, “we should not be surprised by the anti-Semitism and reservations, even the hatred towards the Jews who live here.”. The dust raised by the embassy was such that public television ZDF, where Lanz works and on whose platform the podcast is published, was forced to eliminate the “diamonds” passage and apologize.. The matter is too serious to make jokes, but just in case someone send a warning to Lepe.

The unprecedented attack by the Palestinian armed group in Israel on October 7 and the continuous Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip have once again shaken stability in the Middle East. While most countries have condemned

What can you do if you are trapped in a loop, in a mediocre and bland job, with no future and in which you do not get the recognition you deserve, but which you cannot give up no matter how hard you try? In addition to the personal story of one in three readers of this paragraph, that plot is the starting point of De Laatste Dag, The Last Day, a recent humor miniseries starring Elisabeth Lucie Baeten, an actress, writer, screenwriter and comedian. which has become the sensation of the moment in the flamenco world.

Every morning, upon waking up and leaving the house on the way to a fictional television, the character of Lucie (played but also created by her) repeats out loud: “Today is my last day.”. She wants to be promoted but her boss ignores her, her colleagues have their own misfortunes and the circumstances are not on their side.. She wants to resign, she knows she should resign, she is determined to resign, but she never succeeds, because something always happens.. A meeting that cannot be postponed, a pregnancy test with a false positive, a crush with the new guy in the office.

The plot doesn't have much mystery: misunderstandings, flirtations, easy jokes, unexpected twists that are completely expected.. But it has had some success in Flanders, managing to connect with the millions of people who are bored in their chair for eight hours five days a week and feel identified with that very Belgian mixture of pacelessness, routine, lightness, overreaction and improvisation. But above all, it has raised the profile of its protagonist and person in charge, whom some compare – with somewhat questionable criteria – with the North American Lena Dunham, the creator of the also successful Girls.

Elisabeth defines herself as an “irritating optimist” and is the author of books such as: Living in the Now. Guide to what to do, what not to do and what the hell is happening in these confusing times, quite a statement. He started out doing everything, but he found an immediate niche on Instagram with the express mockery of the week's protagonists.. No one wants to be a victim of their sharp and ironic darts, but at the same time no one wants to be completely left out, because they have become a way of determining who matters and who doesn't in current Belgian times.. “Even the prime minister follows me,” he boasted these days.

His recent videos do not last more than a minute and a half and the internet has loved them. In Gila style, she presents herself as Katrien van Politiek PR, Katrien from political public relations, and has telephone conversations with the enemy, which are the local leaders who get into trouble, get out of control drunk or make fools of themselves with delusional excuses. They are not biting, but they are accurate and close, and that is precisely why they work so well. They make people laugh without needing to destroy, but they are devastating from forced innocence.

Is he a celebrity? Well, he is earning it, but in reality, if he were, or something similar, it would only be in half of the country. The other half, the Walloon and French-speaking, have no idea who he is.. There are no references in their media, there is no follow-up on the street. The division in the country, for these things, is total or almost, and there are few stars capable of covering the entire national universe.. It is a double-edged blade: on the one hand they live better, without many stresses and too much cultural friction, but on the other hand, ignorance becomes dull and is very difficult to smooth out.

Just 20 years have passed since Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Moscow, 1963) went from being the richest oligarch in Russia to becoming the most famous prisoner in the country. He served 10 years in prison in cells overlooking the ice and today he wears the same timid look that always made it difficult to believe that he was Vladimir Putin's most hated opponent.

The Russian leader himself ended up granting him a pardon at Christmas 2013.. Since then he has lived in exile in London, where he continues to get into some puddles. He explicitly supported the armed rebellion of mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin even though he had no sympathy for Wagner's boss.. “When Putin arrived, it seemed to me that we were heading towards a truly democratic path, but I was wrong,” he explains to EL MUNDO during a brief visit to Spain, a country whose transition model interests him.. He believes that “since 2014, Russia has been falling, step by step, to a practically formalized regime of dictatorship.”

Is the end of the regime near due to the war? Or did the war happen because the regime has no future? During his terms, Putin undertook warlike actions on four occasions to solve his government's problems.. Now you have started a war again because you have felt that your support within Russian society is falling. You called on Russians to support Evgeny Prigozhin's mutiny. Do you not trust a democratic transition? For a regime change apart from a general atmosphere in society, there has to be a collapse, a failure within the regime. Of course, there are going to be bad guys on one side and the other.. Prigozhin was one of those bad guys, but he weakened the regime significantly. A peaceful decline of the regime is possible, provided that the regime realizes that there are other options.. I will give an example so that I can be understood.. Around 200,000 or 300,000 people took to the streets of the capital of Belarus, Minsk, in 2020.. They were protesting against the falsification of the elections of the president of Belarus and had the support of Belarusian society. However, when they approached the prison where the political prisoners were held, the doors were closed and they stopped there even though they could have broken them and freed the inmates.. There the Belarusian revolution ended and a period of reaction began that has left all opponents emigrated or in prisons.. What happened in Belarus teaches us a lesson: if you are not willing to go to the end, do not take people out into the streets. Do you then believe that Putin will die with his boots on? Everything seems to indicate that this will be what will happen. If Putin had left power definitively in 2008, he would have remained in people's memories as a not-so-bad president.. When he returned to office in 2012, people took it worse. In the Spanish transition, which I know a little about, there were a series of guarantees [for the previous regime]. After 2022, I don't think anyone can guarantee anything to Putin. Because Putin's surrender is worth lifting sanctions and a future Russian government will be willing to hand Putin over [to international justice] under those conditions.. He knows it perfectly. That is why he will maintain power as long as he can. If Putin takes kyiv, if he takes over most of Ukraine and looks victorious…. What will he do next? That's what I try to explain to European politicians.. Imagine: you are president of Russia, you have occupied Ukraine, a place where two thirds of the population hate you and they have set up a guerrilla, partisans.. You have a destroyed territory, and you have to spend money on reconstruction, because otherwise there will be waves of refugees to Russia. It also has a million people who are already used to being paid for killing, because they have gone into combat to earn 10 times more than before and, of course, they want to continue with the 'banquet'.. At that time, it has been 10 years in which the country's economy is not growing, so the well-being of the people rather falls.. And on top of that, no one can take away the sanctions.. What are you going to do? Go for more. In my opinion it is obvious. And what exactly would it mean to go for more? People forget about the ultimatum that Putin gave at the end of 2021: retract NATO to the borders of the year 1997. That means: Baltic countries, Poland…. You may even decide to include East Germany. Putin's thinking is that Europe will ultimately hand over Ukraine. And then he's going to hand over the Baltics, and with that NATO breaks up, so he can do whatever he wants afterwards.. Putin [with Kiev already subdued] would try to recruit people in Ukraine for his army: the country would be collapsed, with nothing to do, there would be people willing to fight against Putin and also for Putin: that is the Donbas model. I estimate he could recruit a million people, enough to take the Baltics. How did Putin go from the almost bloodless annexation of Crimea and the covert, limited interference in Donbas of 2014 to the full-scale invasion of 2022? Without a doubt those Such erroneous decisions were made because their environment was reduced as a result of COVID. We know the names and surnames of the people who led to those erroneous decisions.. [Businessman] Yuri Kovalchuk, [pro-Russian oligarch] Victor Medvedchuk and [FSB intelligence service general Sergei] Beseda. We know Kovalchuk's ideology: imperialist and traditionalist. Medvedchuk did it more for money: he has invested more than 1 billion corrupting Ukraine, and it worked for him. And the other [Beseda] told Putin that the regions of Ukraine were going to welcome him with flowers. It seems that the regime defrauded itself. This is how authoritarian regimes usually end: they lose their link with reality. Between 2013 and 2014 there was only one big difference between both countries: Ukraine was more or less democratic and Russia was more or less authoritarian.. If Putin had been in a different state of mind he could have bought or leased Crimea.. We could have been like France and Belgium. The situation turned out to be completely different. Ukraine began to consolidate itself even more as a nation, in ten years Ukraine has made great progress and Putin finds himself with a state that is considered totally different from Russia. 2014 was Putin's mistake, and 2022 is its continuation. What attitude should Europe have towards Russia? There are two bad ideas. The first is to talk about Russia going to disintegrate, which is not realistic and if it were it would be dangerous.. And in any case it serves to scare people and rally them around Putin. The second bad idea is sanctions: Europe is a rule of law, so every limitation of rights must be described by law. Unfortunately, there have been almost two years of sanctions, and there are still no strict rules on how to get out of the sanctions.. It should be clear to anyone. What do you think would happen if Putin dies tomorrow? If a brick falls on Putin's head tomorrow, [Prime Minister] Mikhail Mishustin would be the successor.. Russian history suggests that it would not retain power for long: there were transition periods after Stalin and after Brezhnev. One of the main missions of the opposition, apart from stopping the war, is to influence that process. To overthrow a dictatorship, apart from a general atmosphere of society, there has to be a collapse within the regime itself: the Army is not willing to shoot against the people.