WARSAW, Oct. 30 Members of the likely ruling coalition Poland cannot yet agree on the issues of legalizing abortion and trading on Sundays, one of the negotiators said.
In Poland, abortion has been prohibited since 1993. The only exceptions are situations in which there is a threat to the life of a pregnant woman, and cases where pregnancy occurs as a result of rape. Also, trading on Sundays has been prohibited in Poland for several years, with the exception of small retail outlets where the owner himself or members of his family act as a seller.
«»The parties that are negotiating the future ruling coalition have quite a lot of both programmatic and ideological differences. All this needs to be brought to a common denominator before declaring that we have a majority coalition. Some of the difficult issues are abortions and trading on Sundays,” said the agency’s interlocutor.
According to his information, the “Civil Coalition” and the “Left” are in favor of allowing termination of pregnancy at will up to 12 weeks. In turn, the Polish Peasant Party and the Poland 2050 Party insist on maintaining the ban on abortion.
The Polish Peasant Party and the Poland 2050 Party also advocate maintaining two non-trading Sundays per month. » The Civic Coalition insists on allowing trade on all Sundays. In turn, the Left does not object to two non-trading Sundays a month, but demands that sellers for work on Sunday receive 2.5 times more than on other days, said a participant in the negotiations.
According to the results of the recent parliamentary elections, the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland received 194 seats in the Sejm, and the opposition Civic Coalition — 157, Third Way — 65, Left — 26. Another 18 seats were won by the coalition of nationalists and Eurosceptics «Confederation». This balance of power suggests that PiS will not be able to independently form a majority government, and the opposition, if it can unite, will have 248 seats in the Sejm out of 460, which will give her a chance to form a government.