France’s digital retraining trap

High-flown rhetoric on how to modernize France’s industrial sector hasn’t translated into a clear strategy on the ground.

BEAUVAIS, France — Northern France is one of many industrial regions in Western Europe that globalization forgot.

Factory automation and outsourcing are eating French jobs, leaving generations of workers ill-equipped and left behind.

“Before, we needed one engineer and five technicians or machine operators,” says Frederique Langlois, a mechanic who has worked for Nestlé for 20 years. “Now, it’s the opposite.”

Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron’s national plan to modernize his country’s industrial sector aims to usher the nation’s aging workforce into the digital economy, in part by retraining workers to wean them off reliance on low-skill, lifelong jobs that are vanishing fast.

Macron hopes France will lead European industry within three to five years but a year in, and despite the attention of the country’s most energetic reformer, there is little evidence in France’s industrial heartland to suggest that the plan has done much to narrow manufacturing’s skills gap.

Macron’s masterplan

Macron debuted his “Industrie du Futur” initiative last year to much applause. His promise of €4.6 billion in tax incentives and loans for companies looking to modernize and a new vision to help factories stay afloat was seen as a potential panacea to France’s lagging growth and its emphasis on reskilling workers was welcomed by a country uneasy about the march of globalization.

A year on, high-flown rhetoric hasn’t translated into a clear strategy on the ground. Lack of consensus about how best to retrain workers and bureaucracy that accompanies ad-hoc negotiations between companies, regional governments, business associations and labor unions, have slowed progress.

“There’s been a definite delay in certain branches of industry,” says Pascal Pavageau, the confederate secretary of French union Force Ouvrière. “We need to help professional branches identify their points of focus as industry changes.”

How best to retrain workers isn’t a new problem. For decades, local worker unions, business associations, companies and regional governments have met annually to draft training curricula and set budgets for the regional workforce through a bureaucratic, consensus-based system. In recent years, they’ve acknowledged the need for a digital shift in their thinking.

This is where Macron’s industrial plan wants to step in. A streamlined national vision to bring factories into the information age would, in theory, accelerate training programs, making it easier for local decision makers to push for change. But some argue that national leaders do not have enough industry know-how to dictate what new skills are needed.

“People on the floor will continue to have the competencies of drilling and welding,” says Gilles Lodolo, the head of communications for the metal and professional business association UIMM. “We think it is very important not to reinvent or create curricula that can be too general with no added value for companies.”

One organization at the forefront of the push to retrain northern France’s industrial workforce is a network of training centers called Promeo. Partly funded by regional government and partly by private sector business groups, Promeo have accelerated the push towards digital skills in the last few years.

“Macron didn’t invent the smart factory,” says Olivier Taboureux, the director of Promeo’s training center in the northern French city of Beauvais, where he is also the deputy mayor. “When you have a good idea, everyone else probably has it too.”

The Promeo training building looks like any decades-old public high school — grey bricks outside, yellowing walls indoors. There’s even a cafeteria with an assortment of liquified lunch options.

Apprentices in their late teens hang out in a large, poster-filled atrium between classes. Older students, in their mid-thirties and forties, congregate in classrooms upstairs ironing out their final projects. Welding stations, table saws and old fashioned assembly lines litter the “live factory” style classrooms. But that’s slowly changing as the center invests in 3D printers, computer labs and more advanced robots.

About €32 billion is allocated every year to training workers in France, according to Le Figaro. Almost €14 billion of that is contributions from private companies; the rest comes from public funds from local and national governments and fragmented public administrations.

Promeo, for example, receives around €50 million annually thanks to an apprenticeship tax paid by companies, cash injections from the UIMM organization and funds from the Haut-de-France regional government.

This year around €500,000 will fund new collaborative robots for their hands-on factory classroom. This investment will give students skills needed in the town’s main factory, owned by agricultural firm AGCO, which was awarded the “factory of the year” award for its modern infrastructure.

They’re also receiving money to help the unemployed transition into digital industry, though most of Promeo’s students are either straight out of high school or employees sent by their companies.

Some students, though, are abandoning manufacturing altogether, emerging from training programs not as pioneers driving French factories into the future but simply as managers.

“Project and human management are the most important skills now,” explains Antony Cartier, who works for agricultural equipment company, AGCO.

Celine Cordier, who like Cartier reached her mid-thirties and found she couldn’t progress any further up the career ladder, was a technical drawer in the town of Tergnier for French transport company SNCF for close to a decade. Now, her company will find her a new spot in their communications and continuous training department in Paris after she graduates.

“SNCF needs human skills now,” she says. “They can’t automate all of their services.”

German lifeboats

Critics say the lack of national support for industrial digitization is keeping France from competing with Europe’s leading industrial players.

Germany pioneered the concept of “digital industry,” so-called Industrie 4.0, in 2013. German manufacturing centers are much admired here in France.

One huge advantage is the German education system, says Thibaut Bidet-Mayer, the author of a report on the “Industrie du Futur” strategy by French think tank La Fabrique de l’Industrie.

Germans get put on apprenticeship tracks as early as middle or high school, while the theory-based French school system only requires specialization after high school.

One of the most anticipated elements of Macron’s plan is a partnership with the German government, designed to help the French learn how to implement Industry 4.0.

Germany’s industrial presence and influence is already strongly felt in northern France. “One third of our regional companies’ capital comes from Germany,” says Florent Roussel, a communications manager for Promeo.

Promeo’s leaders are optimistic the French will catch up, regardless of national plans or European competitors. Younger workers with a more intuitive understanding of the digital world might not even need additional training, making them appealing replacements for an aging workforce.

“[The French] are grumpy but I think we will be able to do a good job and evolve,” says director Taboureux.

This article was updated to correct the name of a French think tank on industry. The name is La Fabrique de l’Industrie.

Polish media veers back to pre-1989

Kaczynski leads push to bring state-run media to heel, even if the ratings stink.

WARSAW — The changes to Poland’s media landscape came to international attention at the weekend when unprecedented critical remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama about the state of its democracy were edited out of state-owned TV news broadcasts.

Viewers of independent television stations on Friday evening heard Obama, who was here for a NATO summit, say: “I expressed to President [Andrzej] Duda our concerns over certain actions and the impasse around Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal.” Poles who turned into the public broadcaster’s main evening news program only heard Obama’s comments praising Poland.

The episode highlighted the tightening grip of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party on state-run television, known as TVP, since it came to power last year. The goal of PiS’s new media strategy isn’t to expand audience, which if anything is falling steeply. It’s political, and seems to be working. The party’s poll numbers are soaring above rivals in opinion polls.

The larger fear among political opponents is that the government will next look to bring private broadcasters and publishers to heel, and is already eyeing foreign-owned media in Poland.

The changes at TVP came quickly. Journalists out of step with the new authorities were pushed out. Newscasts are now unapologetically pro-government. On Saturday, TVP responded to criticism of its news agenda by condemning those who had pointed out Poland’s constitutional problems during the NATO summit, with commentators calling it “foul” and “shocking.” Poland has been embroiled for months in a crisis over which rules the country’s top constitutional court should follow.

The new-look state television is bleeding viewers, but those who’ve tuned out aren’t the people PiS is trying to influence. Its main evening news program has shed 750,000 viewers since the beginning of the year, falling to 2.7 million people. Overall, TVP saw a 19.8 percent fall in viewers since Jacek Kurski took over as TVP boss in January, putting it behind two private rivals.

“I don’t deny that some of the viewers, especially those with liberal views, have stopped watching us,” Kurski, a former MEP and PiS politician, said in a recent interview. “At the same time, many conservative viewers from right-wing areas of Poland have returned to TVP.”

Those conservative viewers are likely to be traditional PiS voters. Its core electorate is poorer, older people living outside the country’s large cities. “The government’s control of public television is effective,” said Aleksander Smolar, head of the Stefan Batory Foundation think tank and a critic of PiS. “It hardens the convictions of their core electorate.”

A new survey by the CBOS organization found Law and Justice at 39 percent support, with the opposition Civic Platform party at 15 percent and the new Modern party at 14 percent. That’s a better result than PiS gained in October’s national election.

A hands-on approach

What PiS is doing is not unusual. Even after the end of communist rule in 1989, democratic governments of both the Left and Right sought to influence radio and television. But the scale of PiS’s overhaul is deeper than anything that has come before.

The new TVP has a high profile supporter in Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s most powerful politician. “Television has changed for the better and that was done by Jacek Kurski,” Kaczyński said in a recent interview.

In the same interview, Kaczyński spoke at length about the bitter experience of his party’s 2005-2007 government, whose downfall he blamed on insufficient control of the media. “We had no media protection, and that applies to the public media which were supposedly ours. We were attacked from there no less than from private television, which was very unfavorable,” he said, adding, “The average Pole assesses the situation not on the basis of what is, but on the basis of what he sees on television.”

The government is pushing a deeper overhaul of public radio and television, although international criticism from the EU and the Council of Europe prompted it to delay the legislation, probably until next year.

Under a draft bill, national media are supposed to “preserve national traditions, patriotic and human values,” to “counteract misrepresentations of Polish history,” as well as portray “family values” and “respect the Christian value system.” The law would also force most public media employees to reapply for their own jobs.

The media changes PiS has undertaken so far prompted Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, to drop Poland from 18th to 47th place in its annual press freedom ranking.

“I’m not saying it was good before and now it’s bad. I’m saying it was bad but now it’s a nightmare,” said Maciej Mrozowski, a professor at Warsaw’s social sciences SWPS University who conducted a March study of bias at the country’s main public and private newscasts for the country’s telecommunications regulator.

Krzysztof Skowroński, the head of the Polish Journalists Association, rejected that criticism, saying that if public television is taken together with private networks, which tend to be more critical of the ruling party, then “there is balance.”

TVP rebuffed the accusation of bias, telling POLITICO in a statement that its news programs are “prepared according to journalistic standards of reliability and objectivity.”

‘Repolonizing’ private media

Although the Polish government’s main focus is on revamping public radio and television, Kaczyński has complained about the power of foreign companies, mainly German, in the Polish media market. Polska Press Group, owned by Verlagsgruppe Passau, dominates local newspapers. Ringier Axel Springer, a Swiss-German joint venture, controls Onet.pl, a popular internet portal, as well as the largest tabloid Fakt and Newsweek Polska. (Axel Springer is the co-owner of POLITICO in Europe.)

“We have to undertake the repolonization of the media. We have to be brave and not allow ourselves to be terrorized, either here or eventually in the European Union,” Kaczyński said in a Facebook chat. He called for a “step by step” effort to buy back foreign controlled media so that “they become Polish to the largest possible percent.”

Government control over public broadcasters is nothing new in Europe.

Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi had his Mediaset private broadcaster as well as a grip on the Rai public broadcaster when he was prime minister. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government also keeps a close eye on public television, although the main TV channel’s news program has seen steep falls in viewer numbers since radical changes made a year ago.

Mrozowski of SWPS University argues that few European countries have seen anything like the changes now happening in Poland.

“Every criteria shows that public television has left the standards accepted in the rest of Europe,” he said. “Polish media never really met those standards, but such one-sided television and such lies haven’t been seen in Poland since 1989.”

A bevy of left-wing Hollywood figures showered praise on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman during his testimony on Tuesday during the House Intelligence Committee’s partisan impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

“I have never been more proud to be an American. Bravo, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman!” horror author film producer Stephen King said.

“It is amazing and appalling that Republicans are going after veteran military officers,” said former Netflix talk show host and White Privilege star Chelsea Handler. “How many people have to come forward for Republicans to stop defending the man who pretended he had bone spurs in favor of all the men and women who actually serve our country every day?”

Indeed, during the hearing, Lt. Col. Vindman said President Trump was “well within his right” to ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during a now-infamous July 25 telephone call, to use his country’s resources to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, as it regards to potential corruption.

The Democrat-led impeachment hearing hinges on the party’s argument that President Trump pressured President Zelensky into launching a probe into Biden and leveraging hundreds of millions in foreign aid in the process.

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified that he couldn’t recall Ukrainian government officials saying they felt pressure from the Trump administration. to investigate the Bidens.

Despite his contradictions, the Hollywood left saw an unwavering star witness in Lt. Col. Vindman. Check out their reactions to Tuesday impeachment hearings below.

Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the bestselling book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.

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After seven summits devoted to the issue in less than a year, expectations are low that EU leaders will work any miracles this week on a migration crisis that has tested European values, shaken alliances, erected razor-wire fences and reinstated border controls in the passport-free Schengen zone.

The stakes are high, and getting higher, with leaders again warning that the European project is at risk of collapse. Problems that have plagued the EU’s migration strategy from the beginning — notably, reluctance to accept refugee quotas — refuse to go away. Others have arisen, including concerns that Greece’s inability to control its borders will mean the end of Schengen.

But EU leaders are determined to show that progress is being made. The buzzword is “implementation” — getting countries to deliver on what they have reluctantly promised.

Here are five of the hottest migration issues on the summit agenda:

Turkey

The EU invested a lot of political and financial capital to enable Turkey to stem the flow of refugees to Europe. Its cooperation is key, but the return on the investment so far has been poor.

The European Commission says the number of people entering the EU illegally has been in steady decline since October, although more than expected are still crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey to the Greek islands despite harsh winter weather. There is a contentious proposal that Syrian refugees could be sent back from Greece to Turkey to have their asylum claims processed. Turkey’s ambassador to the EU, Selim Yenel, called the idea “dangerous.”

“This destroys the readmission agreement, the understanding behind it and it would jeopardise the action plan,” Yenel said, referring to the EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement that the Commission is pushing Ankara to implement, starting in June.

Talks with Turkey were dealt a blow Wednesday evening when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu cancelled a trip to Brussels for migration talks after a deadly car bomb attack in Ankara.

Schengen

The Council last week introduced a procedure allowing countries that have reintroduced internal border controls to extend them for up to two years. Germany and Austria, which resumed border checks in September, will be the first up for extensions if the flow continues northward from Greece along the Western Balkan route.

The Council came up with 50 recommendations to help Athens manage its borders. Greece was given a month to form an action plan and three months to implement it. Officials insist the tight deadlines are not intended to punish Greece, but to allow countries to extend border controls if the situation has not improved.

Hotspots and relocation

Greece is trying. Government officials have come to Brussels with “four-and-a-half hotspots [out of five] fully operational,” according to Nikos Xydakis, the Greek minister for European affairs. The hotspot on the island of Kos still needs a few weeks before completion, he added, due to local opposition. In Italy, only two out of six are up and running, the Commission said last week, criticising Rome for its slow progress. So far Lampedusa and Pozzallo are functional, and Taranto “will be open February 28,” said Mario Morcone, head of the migration department at the interior ministry. Italy and Greece were expected to have 11 functioning hotspots in November.

While progress on hotspots is slow, the relocation scheme has not even got off the ground. Out of 160,000 people to be relocated, only 497 refugees have moved from Italy and Greece to host countries around the EU.

EU coast guard

Two days before the last EU summit in December the Commission put forward a proposal to set up a European border and coast guard body. EU leaders agreed, in principle, though not all saw a need for a multinational naval force. Spaniards said they are quite satisfied with their own navy, and Greeks raised sovereignty concerns about a clause allowing the Commission to send in border guards even if a country objects.

The deadline is July and there are urgent calls for work on the agreement to be accelerated. Home affairs and justice ministers have been meeting once a month and diplomats say that, with some changes, a deal could be struck by the summer. However, it will take time for the coast guard to be fully operational, diplomats say.

Resettlement, again

Dutch Labour Party leader Diederik Samsom proposed that refugees could be sent to Turkey while they wait for the application process. He also proposed a resettlement of 250,000 refugees from Turkey to EU countries willing to accept them. Turkey opposes the idea of taking back refugees. Ankara also complains about the slow pace of resettlement. “The fear many people have in Turkey is that Europe will choose the best and brightest and leave the rest to us,” said Selim Yenel, Turkey’s ambassador to the EU.

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A Seoul court convicted singers Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon on Friday of several counts of sex crimes, including the gang rape of women during “drinking parties” and, in Jung’s case, filming sex with ten women without their consent and sharing the videos with friends.

Some of those videos were taken during the 2016 instances of gang rape at the parties identified, the court found.

The South Korean news agency Yonhap described Jung as “a disgraced singer and TV personality;” Choi was once a member of the Korean pop (K-pop) band FT Island.

Their arrests bookend a tragic week for the Korean popular music industry that began with the death of K-pop girl band star Goo Hara, presumed to be the product of her third suicide attempt.

Goo was hospitalized with an unknown condition last year that many believed was the result of a suicide attempt following a fight with an ex in which she claimed he physically assaulted her, then threatened to publish videos he filmed of the couple having sex to end their career. Her management admitted to another suicide attempt in May, then forced her to record and promote a new album released in mid-November.

“Jung argued that his sexual act was done with mutual agreement, while Choi flatly denied having sex with the victims. But Jung confessed he had sex (with the women) together with Choi, and his confession was also proved by their KakaoTalk [instant messaging application] chats. In this sense, it can be recognized that they jointly raped drunk women,” the court said in the sentencing hearing, where two others were also convicted of participating in the gang rapes. “Jung and Choi are singers who have enjoyed huge popularity. Thus they should assume social responsibility in proportion to their fame and wealth.”

“The defendants may be young in age, but the crime committed is too serious and grave. The court cannot see these actions as a mere joke. The victims have also requested severe punishment for the defendants,” the court statement continued.

The court also found that the women were clearly in a state of intoxication that made it impossible for them to consent in the footage recovered from the KakaoTalk chats.

“The two have asserted that they had sex with the women after obtaining their consent, but the women were in a state where they were unable to protest or resist,” the court noted. “Jung has testified that Choi also had sex with the women and Jung provided evidence including the KakaoTalk messages. Based on these, the court has ruled that Jung and Choi have together raped women who could not resist because they were too drunk.”

“I deeply regret my foolishness and I feel great remorse,” Jung said in his final remarks to the court.

While Yonhap described Jung’s and Choi’s prison sentences as “heavy,” they were only sentenced to six and five years in prison, respectively, for repeatedly forcing themselves on multiple women in group scenarios. The court will also force the men, both 30 years old, to receive 80 hours of what the agency described as “sex offender treatment” and banned them from working with children for five years.

The court did not identify any of the victims of rape as minors, but South Korean law protects children from all registered sex offenders despite the nature of the crime.

The sentence for Jung is two years less than what prosecutors demanded; the court agreed with the prosecution on Choi.

Prosecutors developed a case against Jung and Choi after Jung shared some of the videos in a group instant message that included Seungri, a member of the highly popular K-pop group Big Bang, which has sold over 140 million records worldwide. Seungri is facing his own criminal charges as a co-owner of Burning Sun, a nightclub in Seoul’s glamorous Gangnam neighborhood in which prosecutors allege Seungri operated a prostitution side business for wealthy clientele and laundered money from prostitution and gambling. Police issued a warrant for Seungri in April.

Officials investigating Seungri requested copies of his private communications, revealing the group text messages in which Jung shared his videos with other friends in the music industry.

Prior to Jung’s conviction, the Seungri scandal nearly took down one of the largest pop music record labels in South Korea, YG Entertainment. CEO Yang Hyun-suk resigned as the head of YG in June after investigations into YG allegedly covering illegal drug use by its talent — a major crime in South Korea — and Yang himself participating in lavish parties that ended at Burning Sun and in the presence of prostitutes.

In May, the South Korean investigative news program Straight reported that Yang attended a dinner party with Low Taek Jho, a fugitive Malaysian millionaire, and the K-pop artist Psy, that ended at Burning Sun with the group soliciting at least ten prostitutes. Psy asserted that he left before the group migrated to the night club; YG confirmed the presence of prostitutes at the afterparty.

Seungri resigned from Big Bang this year amid the scandal, while several members of the group were engaging in mandatory military service. The band faced controversy even amid this hiatus, as one of the group’s rappers, T.O.P., apologized profusely upon completing his service in July because officers caught him using marijuana.

YG deliberately marketed Seungri as a level-headed counterbalance to the insanity of the industry in a Netflix original series titled YG Future Strategy Office, in which the pop star is responsible for the record label’s damage control unit.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

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Poland raises fences to block farmland sales

New land law makes it almost impossible for foreigners to buy Polish farms. But it’s difficult for Poles, too.

WARSAW — A new Polish law restricting ownership rights for farmland is raising protests from legal watchdogs and some farmers, and the European Commission plans to take a close look whether it violates EU rules.

The law goes into effect April 30, and was passed in order to prevent foreigners from easily buying Polish land. When Poland joined the EU on May 1, 2004, it received a 12-year opt-out preventing non-Poles from buying rural land, as the government was worried that richer Western Europeans, and in particular Germans, would swoop in to buy vast amounts on farmland.

That’s still the worry today.

“Land is a national good, and it should be in family farms, for the most part cultivated or managed by Poles and Polish farmers,” Krzysztof Jurgiel, the agriculture minister, said in a recent radio interview.

The problem for Warsaw is that EU rules forbid national discrimination. That forces the new law to include tough restrictions on land sales and ownership, which make it difficult for most Poles, as well as foreigners, to buy farmland.

The new law halts land sales from the government’s landowning agency for five years, and also imposes restrictions on the sale of private land. As of next week, only people formally qualified to be farmers can buy land. The law requires that they have lived in a given locality for five years, and pledge to personally work the land they buy for a decade. Farm sizes are limited to 300 hectares.

The government land agency can scrutinize sales, and can step in to buy land at its own determined price.

The only owners not bound by the new restrictions are the state and religious institutions. Poland’s right-wing government felt that churches, and especially the powerful Roman Catholic Church, are due compensation for losses suffered during 45 years of communism.

The government points out that restricting ownership rights for farmland is common practice across much of the EU.

“The goal of the law is to keep the current structure of Polish farming, with mainly fairly small family farms,” said Piotr  Semeniuk, an analyst with Polityka Insight, a think tank.

Worries over joining EU

Despite the opt-out negotiated when Poland joined the EU, Polish farmland has been a solid investment, drawing in both farmers and land speculators. A hectare cost on average about 6,634 złotys in 2004 (about €1,543 at today’s exchange rate), and now costs almost 40,000 złotys, according to Poland’s statistical agency.

Although foreigners were formally not allowed to buy land, they could do so with permission from the interior ministry, which wasn’t difficult to obtain. It was also possible for foreigners to buy through local partners, or by setting up Polish companies. Lawyers say the new law ends most of those work-arounds.

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Some companies, as well as successful local farmers, have built large holdings that have turned into big businesses. As a result, Poland has become one of the EU’s leading food exporters, earning €26.3 billion last year, a 7.7 percent increase over 2014 and five times more than in 2014.

But while a tiny number of entrepreneurial farmers have grown rich, most Polish farms are still small and poor — with an average size of only 10.5 hectares. That creates a powerful advocacy group of smallholders worried about larger agribusinesses.

But the fear is that the law goes too far.

Adam Bodnar, Poland’s human rights ombudsman, commented on a draft version of the law earlier this year, saying it gives too much power to the land agency.

“The draft foresees something like expropriation,” he told the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper, saying that the bar for such a step should be fairly high, and that the using the law to prevent land speculation “does not seem to me to be the appropriate path.”

Poland’s opposition parties have also protested, as have some farmers, while the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation said the law “may violate the constitution.”

Bodnar and the opposition said they plan to appeal the law to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. But the country’s top constitutional court is embroiled in a conflict with the government, which refuses to recognize its verdicts.

Brussels also plans to take a close look at the new Polish law.

“We need to assess whether the law poses challenges from the perspective of EU law and will contact the Polish authorities if needed to raise possible concerns,” said a European Commission spokesman.

The Commission has already launched probes into similar land ownership laws in Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia because the measures “were considered disproportionate to the free movement of capital principle or discriminatory against EU nationals.”

There is also a fear that Poland’s restrictions will cause land prices to fall — which could pose a problem for more ambitious farmers who have taken out loans backed by the value of their land. A dramatic change in its value could force banks to either call in loans, or to demand a greater level of security.

A question of politics

The law also has a political dimension. For decades Poland’s most powerful rural party was the Polish People’s Party (PSL), also known as the Peasants’ Party — a non-ideological grouping whose main interest was providing jobs for its supporters. The party was part of the previous governing coalition, but is now in the opposition.

The new government of the Law and Justice party (PiS) has long challenged the Peasants’ Party for the rural vote, and the new law gives a huge amount of power to officials appointed by PiS.

“It’s an attack on the PSL,” said Semeniuk. “PiS is calculating that local PSL activists have large agribusinesses and the law hits them, weakening PSL.”

This article has been corrected to note that the opt-out was 12 years, not 16, and to correct the last name of Piotr Semeniuk not Stefaniuk.

The ongoing impeachment sham is a show trial — one that ought to be reviewed as a drama critic would. After all, the lead House prosecutor, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), is a failed screenwriter.

Last month featured the first act, before Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee, with “star” witness Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union.

This Wednesday, the second act, featuring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and the House Judiciary Committee, will begin.

The term “show trial” comes to us from the former Soviet Union, referring to the “Great Purges” that took place in the mid- to late-1930s under dictator Joseph Stalin. These trials were staged theater to which the foreign press was invited to “prove” the fairness of the Soviet justice system.

Admittedly, there are two differences between Sondland’s performance last month and the Soviet show trials. The first is that this process is not likely to end with the execution of the president (despite the apparent hopes of Kathy Griffin, Madonna, Johnnie Depp, Snoop Dogg, and countless others).

The second difference is that the American media, unlike the “useful idiots” of the 1930s foreign media, are not being duped. Quite the opposite, they are willing participants and have a leading role in the scripted farce.

In a world governed by reason, or political leaders of integrity who are committed to truth rather than fairytales, Sondland’s testimony would have concluded this dark comedy — “The End”!

Yet, even as ratings sank for the Democrats’ primetime flop, the shrinking share of Americans still watching were subjected to a cringeworthy charade.

Amb. Sondland delivered his opening lines by claiming there had been a “quid pro quo.” Democrats used leading questions to reinforce the claim that the president had used his official powers to investigate a political opponent.

Adam Schiff ran out to tell the press, in so many words, we’ve got him!

The problem was that everything Sondland said was the product of his own conjecture and imaginings. Nobody had actually told him anything, he “just knew.”

The Democrats’ star witness proceeded to crumble under cross-examination by Ohio Republican Reps. Mike Turner and Jim Jordan. Sondland soon admitted that President Trump never actually told him anything about a “quid pro quo” — either for security funding or a White House meeting.

Thankfully, these impeachment hearings, this show trial, has given us three Republicans of whom we can be very proud, and who have plainly tossed the historical Republican script in the circular file.

On top of Reps. Jordan and Turner, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York rose from relative obscurity by way of her relentless and methodical questioning to become a new, rising GOP star herself.

Turner and Jordan traded the stage with Stefanik and proceeded to eviscerate the Democrats’ central claims.

Jordan pointed out that the phone call that started the whole process happened on July 25. Funds were then released to Ukraine on September 11, and a meeting between the presidents took place on September 25.  He then mockingly asked Sondland how the investigation announcement was made.

In one of the few scenes of this spectacle that didn’t feel totally contrived, Sondland fumbled his lines. There was no announcement because there was no demand of which Sondland had any real knowledge!

Jordan’s performance was as good as we’ve come to expect, but Turner stole the show. After Rep. Schiff’s statement that Sondland had given him what he needed to impeach President Trump—leading CNN to report that “Sondland Ties Trump, Pence, Pompeo to Ukraine Pressure Campaign,”—Turner forced Sondland to refute the headline. Sondland admitted he was “presuming.” He then flatly admitted the president had not told him, nor anybody that he knew of, of a “scheme” to tie a “quid pro quo” for money, meetings, or even Christmas gifts!

Game over, right?  Wrong. Here is where the press enters the show trial stage left. At the end of the day, the New York Times, in its daily video impeachment briefing, claimed that there was a “quid pro quo” with regard to a White House meeting; that “major figures … were fully aware of the president’s demands, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo”; and that Sondland was forced to work with Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, in negotiating with the Ukrainians.

Even when The Times mentioned that Sondland had not heard directly from the president about withholding the $400 million in military aid, the paper still made it sound like he heard it from somebody. Sondland said in testimony that he did not.

The Washington Post was just as complicit. Their key points summary included the headings, “Connecting this to the President”; “Pointing Fingers and Naming Names-Including Pompeo, Mulvaney, and Pence”; and “Trump team didn’t care about actual investigations-just announcements.”

None of that acknowledged what Sondland admitted in testimony: Nobody told him anything.  He just made it all up.

But of course, what should we expect from actors in a play other than pure fiction?

Rep. Schiff’s awful screenwriting is a Soviet-style show trial with a predictable ending. But sometimes in Hollywood even a bad first act gets an underserved sequel.

So, as this trainwreck heads to the Judiciary Committee, President Trump and his Whitehouse counsel are wisely refusing to participate.

The president seems to understand that an A-lister would never allow himself to be cast in a cheap daytime soap that nobody watches.

The Democrats have made a mockery of our system, and their impeachment fantasy is a disgrace to our country.

It cannot be dignified with a serious response.

Charlie Kirk is the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, the nation’s largest and fastest growing conservative youth organization with a presence on over 1,400 college and high school campuses; he is also host of “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

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The head coach hasn’t gone all the way since the 2010-11 season but his former charge believes it is only a matter of time before he does once again

Ex-Barcelona captain Carles Puyol has said that he is “convinced” Pep Guardiola will lift another Champions League trophy to add a third to his overall haul, although the former skipper is not sure whether the Catalan boss will achieve that feat with current side Manchester City.

Seen as one of Barca’s all-time greats, Puyol spent his entire professional career at the club, winning Europe’s premier club competition three times in total, with two of those coming under Guardiola’s tutelage.

The current City boss has not tasted European glory since his Camp Nou days, coming close during his time at Bayern Munich as he reached the semi-finals, but Puyol feels that it is only a matter of time before his old boss makes his mark once again.

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“For me, Pep is the best coach I had and the best coach in the world,” the 41-year-old told Goal and SPOX. “You can immediately tell that a team is coached by Pep by the way it plays. That’s why I’m convinced he will win that title again.

“I can’t say whether it will be with Manchester City, but they will focus a lot on that competition as it is practically impossible to catch Liverpool in the Premier League.”

City fans could be forgiven for feeling confident, however, with the reigning English champions having recorded a 2-1 first-leg victory over Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu in the round of 16, giving them the edge as they look to book their place in the quarter-finals.

Madrid aren’t the only big boys they will have to get past, though, and Pep’s old side Bayern were amongst the most convincing sides in the most recent bout of Champions League matches, hammering Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford Bridge.

There are those who doubt the German side’s credentials due to their consistent domination of the Bundesliga, but Puyol believes Bayern should be counted amongst the strongest contenders.

“Bayern are always among the favourites,” he said. “They have an experienced team and will certainly be motivated to win that title again. In the knockout stage, the little details are decisive – I know that from my own experience. Whoever is the most focused and stable will progress.”

With European matters on hold at the moment and attentions turning back to domestic action, Puyol weighed in on Sunday’s upcoming Clasico encounter at the Bernabeu – a clash that has seen its pre-match build-up dominated mainly by both Barca and Madrid’s inconsistent form this campaign.

Similar to many others’ opinion, Puyol feels that it is anybody’s game, stating: “Barcelona and Madrid always have great teams with extraordinary players. Still, it’s correct that they haven’t played as consistently as we’re used to.

“Both have been eliminated from the Copa del Rey, so there are only two chances left to win a title. The decisive weeks of the season have arrived with the knockout stages in the Champions League, the Clasico and the final stages of La Liga.

“We will see what answers the teams come up with for the challenges that await. Of course, I hope Barca will win it, but at the moment everything is wide open.”

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CNN commentator and left-wing activist Van Jones celebrated the passing of the Senate’s version of the justice reform bill this week adding that it is all thanks to Kim Kardashian.

The TV talking head gushed about the passage of the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act, or First Step Act for short. Van Jones said he agrees with President Donald Trump on the issue but noted that it was only passed by the Senate on Tuesday night because of the efforts of the famed reality TV star.

As far as Jones is concerned, it would not have passed if reality show star Kim Kardashian West had not gone to the White House to enlist the help of President Donald Trump to push the bill, TMZ reported.

“If Kim Kardashian had not gone to the White House to talk to Donald Trump, we would not have passed this bill, we would not have 50,000 people fewer in federal prison because of this bill,” Jones told TMZ’s cameras. “100 percent of the people locked up in the federal prison can come home a little bit earlier if they stay out of trouble. 50 percent of them can come home a lot earlier if they work hard. 100 percent of women are not going to be shackled and mistreated, why, because Kim Kardashian was willing to put her celebrity on the line for people she didn’t even know.”

Jones then lashed out at Kardashian’s detractors saying, “And everybody that said she was being played and she was just being used for a photo op, how ya like me now?”

“Look at the scoreboard now,” Jones concluded. “87 votes to 12 in the U.S. Senate? You can’t get 87 to 12 to change the post office name, and we got 87 to 12 to help people behind bars because Kim Kardashian West was willing to stand up for somebody.”

The bill is not yet headed to Trump’s desk. The House of Representatives has already passed its version of the bill, and now it will have to be reconciled before heading to President Trump to be signed into law.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

Greece open to taking back migrants next year

Athens welcomes the Commission’s recommendation for the country to take back migrants.

The Greek government welcomes the European Commission’s recommendation that the country will begin to take back migrants after a five-year hiatus early next year.

“It’s a balanced decision,” Greek Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas told POLITICO Friday.

The Commission announced this week that it wants EU member states to resume the transfer of migrants back to Greece as of mid-March next year. EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said that “transfers should not be applied retroactively,” however.

Under the so-called Dublin regulations, migrants have to register in the first country of arrival and can be sent back if they move to other countries. But since 2011, EU member states have not been able to carry out Dublin transfers to Greece following two judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice which identified systemic deficiencies in the Greek asylum system.

While the country is open to taking back migrants, some conditions will have to be met for Greece to meet the deadline, he said.

“If the EU-Turkey deal on migrants and refugees works, and if the EU maintains its promise to help Athens, then the March 15 deadline is feasible,” Mouzalas said.

The Commission has signaled its commitment to increase help to solve the situation in Greece. On Thursday, it announced that more EU officials and translators would be sent to help clear the backlog of applicants from migrants and refugees stranded on the Greek islands, where many live in very poor conditions.

Athens would have favored a later deadline, Mouzalas said, but added that, ultimately, Greece is happy with the political compromise.

“They recognized that we try very hard to make things better,” he said.

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But not everyone agrees with the Commission’s recommendation. Dutch Senator Tineke Strik, a rapporteur on migration for the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organization, Friday spoke out against the resumption of transfers to Greece.

“In these circumstances, I find it astonishing that the European Commission is recommending something that would only add to the burden on Greece and may prove damagingly counter-productive on many fronts,” she said.