Several media outlets have only belatedly woken up and are now reporting what was first revealed by the portal Niezalezna.pl: the government of Donald Tusk does not intend to apply for further funds under the Operational Programme Development of Eastern Poland (now European Funds for Eastern Poland), which was created in 2007 through the efforts of Law and Justice (PiS). This represents a huge loss not only for the Podkarpacie region – the current authorities will soon wind down the programme. Anti-social policy once again goes hand in hand with revenge against the electorate of right-wing political parties.
In the first half of May, the mayor of Chełm announced that the 13 December government was quietly shutting down the Operational Programme Development of Eastern Poland (OP DEP). During another conference in the “Thinking Poland – Alternative 2.0” series, Jakub Banaszek said:
“A few days ago I received information that this very important programme for Chełm, Podkarpackie, Lubelskie, Podlaskie, Świętokrzyskie, and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships will unfortunately be liquidated. It will not exist! The large pool of funds that was needed will no longer flow to us. Meanwhile, the current minister responsible for funds is busy fighting for political positions, although she should be using her competences to actually fight for the regions. She is not doing that.”
The Eastern Poland Programme as a PiS achievement
The information was immediately reported by Niezalezna.pl, but most media outlets remained silent. Over a week later, the business editorial team at Wprost.pl addressed the issue, admitting that the EU programme supporting Poland’s eastern “wall” would not be continued. Significantly, they wrote: “The Eastern Poland Programme is an achievement of Law and Justice (PiS). Residents of eastern Poland know this well and reward it at the ballot box. In eastern Poland, PiS wins all elections without effort.”
A well-designed programme that helped many regions of the country partially cope with the shock of transformation covered Lubelskie, Podlaskie, Podkarpackie, Świętokrzyskie, and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships. In 2021–2027, it also included Masovian local governments, excluding Warsaw. Thanks to the efforts of Jarosław Kaczyński’s party, in 2007–2013 eastern Poland received nearly 2.4 billion euros under this programme (the EU initially proposed more than half that amount). In 2014–2020, the OP DEP budget exceeded 2 billion euros. Finally, the budget of the European Funds for Eastern Poland (FEPW), the continuation of OP DEP for 2021–2027, amounts to over 2.6 billion euros.
It is therefore hardly surprising that mainstream media prefer to remain silent: this could potentially become another major image crisis for Donald Tusk’s team and the opinion-forming centres supporting it. Meanwhile, Eastern Poland already knows what is coming, and concern is growing among both local officials and residents.
The marshal of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Władysław Ortyl (former Secretary of State in the Ministry of Regional Development during the first Law and Justice (PiS) government), speaks bluntly: “There is a serious risk that the Eastern Poland operational programme will not be continued. It is paradoxical that today Brussels and the European Commission are more in favour of this programme than the ministry or government in Warsaw.” He adds: “Previously it was the opposite – Brussels was very sceptical about this programme, at least in its second edition” (quoted after Nowiny24.pl).
We are dealing with an almost scandalous situation: EU institutions, which have never been particularly eager to “pump” money into Poland, especially under the United Right governments, now see greater value in continuing the programme than the liberal-post-communist political arrangement centred around Donald Tusk.
Łukacijewska pushed into a minefield
As a side note, the mood is predictably being toned down by Civic Coalition (KO) MEP Elżbieta Łukacijewska: “We are fighting for special additional funds for frontline regions bordering Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Such actions require diplomatic silence. Hard work and diplomacy are needed to achieve additional results.”
However, the MEP must be fully aware that she has once again been pushed into a political minefield. It was she who, in 2025 after Rafał Trzaskowski’s electoral defeat, gave a high-profile interview to Gazeta Wyborcza, in which she said that Civic Platform/Civic Coalition (KO) politicians had completely abandoned Podkarpacie or even treated it with contempt.
She said at the time: “Local government officials tell me: former ministers from PiS did little for us, but they always had time for us. When we called, a meeting was arranged within three minutes. The minister would come out into the corridor to meet us. We felt respected. You, on the other hand, have no time for us at all. Of course, a minister is not there for that, but we live in difficult times and in a country where people have emotional and value-based needs.”
Leaving aside whether “PiS ministers did little for Podkarpacie local governments” – the history of the Eastern Poland development programme suggests something quite different. It increasingly appears that the political problems of the Civic Coalition in eastern Poland will deepen further. And Elżbieta Łukacijewska is desperately trying to put a good face on an increasingly bad game.
Once the Curzon Line, now the Tusk Line
The problem is broader. The Civic Coalition is not particularly skilled in socio-economic policy, but it must be credited with one thing: it combines economic ineptitude, which especially harms “Poland B”, with a remarkably determined and even talented form of political vendetta.
In Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, there is a storyline in which the “good guys” take over the shop of an unfortunate man who not only was not particularly liked by them, but was also involved in shady dealings with them. The gang quickly ruins the business of his life.
The metaphor is not perfect, because Podkarpacie would probably prefer to have no political business dealings with Tusk’s party at all, but the mechanism of revenge is similar: Tusk’s party has taken control of Poland and is most strongly damaging the regions it considers politically hostile. This is the logic of the lumpen-liberal elites of the Third Polish Republic, whose interests are enabled by Civic Coalition (KO).
This mechanism does not apply only to Eastern Poland; it affects “Poland B” from the Oder to the Bug, from the Baltic to the Tatras. In both large and small towns, local workplaces are collapsing, domestic companies and branches of Western businesses are shutting down, and public healthcare depends on Minister Jolanta Sobierańska-Grenda, who can without hesitation claim on television that patients are very satisfied with the system’s collapse. Finally, hard data shows that Polish industry has fallen into recession.
And the “goodfellas”?
Most likely, they are carrying equipment out of the ruined shop.
To conclude, I leave readers with a thought so alarming that it becomes plausible in the case of the 13 December government. It may be calculating that it will leave Eastern Poland to its fate in the face of Russia and designate a “line of defence”, effectively a division of the Third Polish Republic along a “Tusk Line”. And it may therefore decide it is not worth investing in that part of the country which it openly dislikes.