Parliamentary sitting starts amid crisis
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
11.01.2017 19:24
A sitting of the Polish parliament started on Wednesday following hours of delay amid a parliamentary crisis over a disputed budget bill.
Speaker Marek Kuchciński (C). Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
The sitting on Wednesday started at 7:00 pm with a minute’s silence for two recently deceased parliamentarians.
Parliamentary Speaker Marek Kuchciński then announced a recess until Thursday at 10:00am.
The sitting came amid a simmering political crisis which has seen opposition MPs staging a sit-in protest since 16 December over a controversial vote on the 2017 budget.
The budget bill was in December voted through by the lower house in a ballot the opposition has called “illegal”.
But members of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party have insisted that there were no irregularities in the vote.
On Wednesday, the Polish Senate, the upper house of parliament, passed the budget bill.
The bill will now be sent to Polish President Andrzej Duda. (rg)