Energy prices will rise from July 1, which will impact Poland’s wallet. As many commentators argue, the date of the increase was not chosen arbitrarily; the European Parliament elections will be held in the first half of June, so the burden on Poles that will come later will not damage the ruling coalition’s election results. Anna Maria Żukowska herself admitted in one of the programs that “Poles will not realize” how much prices have increased, because energy consumption is lower in summer anyway.
In a television studio in Poland, the United Right MP explained where the increases are coming from and how they can be prevented. Janusz Kowalski also said that the price of gas itself will increase by 45%:
The price of natural gas is frozen at PLN 200 per megawatt hour until June 30. This is a solution prepared by the PiS government. (…) Donald Tusk’s government, despite PiS calls, only extended this protection introduced by PiS in December 2023 until June 30. (…) If no law is passed to introduce protection for the entire year 2024, which has proven effective, a tariff (…) of PLN 290 per megawatt hour will be introduced.
Kowalski blames the European emissions trading system for the enormous costs of energy production.
In 2022, Poland lost a net of PLN 30 billion to the EU emissions trading system as a whole. I repeat: thirty billion zlotys.
However, it was during the PiS government that this system was introduced in the European Union, said host Jakub Maciejewski. However, Kowalski replied firmly that Donald Tusk and Manfred Weber were responsible:
But this is precisely part of the policy of the European People’s Party, Donald Tusk and Manfred Weber, which imposes taxes on Polish energy and fights against Polish coal in order to transfer money from Poland to the energy transformation of other countries. This needs to be explained to the viewers: suddenly in the last two years, because of EU policies, because of Fit For 55, before the ‘Grean Deal’, there were costs that had never existed in the Polish economy.
The Sovereign Poland politician also listed how big these costs are for the Polish economy and how the ETS mechanism affects Polish companies.
Poland’s membership fee for the EU is about 33 to 34 billion PLN, and suddenly a second cost appeared: a loss of 30 billion PLN on the EU emissions trading system. How is this loss calculated? Very easy. Several hundred Polish companies are obliged to buy CO2 rights on the stock exchange in Berlin or London. For example, PGE spent over PLN 20 billion last year on purchasing pointless EU rights and this money is a cost to the company. it is transferred to the rate for millions of Polish families, that is, the PLN 20 billion from PGE was transferred to the Leipzig Stock Exchange.
These amounts sound abstract, but from July 1, Poles will not feel an abstract, but a very concrete loss of money in their wallets – especially since energy prices will also rise in the economy, and producers will likely pass this on to their customers.
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Source: wPolityce