Judging by the taxes paid by Apple and Google in Poland, you might think that their parent companies are running a tiny operation selling goods out of a garage, writes Gazeta Wyborcza.

According to the National Court Register (KRS), which keeps records on all companies trading in Poland, Apple Poland’s annual revenue was 13.8m zlotys (€3.45m) while Google Poland earned 139m zlotys.

As a result, both companies pay annual taxes worth 1.1m zlotys and 3.6m zlotys respectively. The Warsaw daily notes, however, that the real value of products sold annually by Apple and Google in Poland is estimated at near 1bn zlotys, adding –

if Apple and Google paid income tax on all revenues received in Poland, the figures would have been more than a dozen times higher compared to those revealed by the KRS.

More than 70 per cent of the 2 million Polish emigrees are aged 39 or younger, writes Rzeczpospolita quoting recent data released by the Central Statistics Office (GUS).

“These figures are appalling. We’re bleeding people,” laments professor Krystyna Iglicka, a demographer and head of Lazarski University, noting that this “unprecedented exodus” of young Poles is occurring at a time when the number of newborn children is alarmingly low.

Other experts point out that a lack of young and creative people who “did not know socialism and were to be our hope” has actually resulted in “lower economic growth, less consumption, reduced development potential as well as higher social spending.”

Polish regions will receive more than €10bn in extra EU funding over the next seven years as part of the forthcoming EU budget, writes Rzeczpospolita.

The funds, already allocated by the Ministry of Regional Development, will be used to achieve three goals: “increasing competitiveness, improving state administration and its effectiveness, as well as boosting social cohesiveness”, explains the daily.

In 2014-2020, Poland is due to receive €101.5bn in CAP and Cohesive Policy funding from Brussels.

“We have something to celebrate”, headlines the economic daily on the 24th anniversary of 1989’s parliamentary elections, which marked the beginning of Poland’s transition from communism to democracy.

Citing key figures in Polish political, social, and academic life, DGP lists the main benefits of the transformation in the country, including political freedom, the end of censorship, membership in the EU, a nearly doubled GDP, thriving entrepreneurship and improved health conditions.

The daily’s front page reproduces part of the Solidarity trade union’s 1989 election campaign poster and, together with all Poland’s major dailies, prints its headline in the movement’s historical typeface.

“Poverty, unemployment, lower salaries, sullen mood – this is the price we are paying for the [economic] slowdown,” writes Rzeczpospolita.

The conservative daily compares the economic situation in the country in the first quarter of this year with the same period in 2009 when Poland was hit by the first wave of the global crisis.

Although the GDP in 2013 grew by 0.5 per cent compared to 0.4 in the same period four years ago, unemployment is higher (11.3 per cent compared to 8.3 per cent) and salary growth has almost stopped (2.6 per cent compared to 6.8 per cent).

But while the governing Civic Platform continues to lose public support, the prospect of it initiating reforms remain small.

As of July 1, electricity prices in Warsaw and northern Poland will drop by 4 per cent in an effort to boost consumption after the economic slowdown has driven down demand. “It is high time, as prices as a proportion of our disposable household income is one of the highest in the EU,” writes Gazeta Wyborcza.

Cypriot residents spend the largest proportion of their disposable household income buying electricity, followed by Poland and Germany in joint second place, according to a Eurostat report examining data throughout the EU.

“This disproportion is mainly due to the fact that Poland is one of the poorest countries in the EU,” notes the daily, stressing that nominal prices in Poland are still lower than the EU average.

According to a new bill drafted by the government, Poles aged less than 35 “will be able to count on substantial state support when buying their first flat or home,” reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

The government is willing to cover 10 per cent of the final price in case of childless couples and single people. Those with children will receive a 15 per cent subsidy.

The provisional law, which has yet to be passed by the Sejm parliament, could come into effect from 2014, notes the daily. According to Home Broker analysis, 41.2 per cent of Poles live in what the EU categorises as overpopulated homes.

Days after North American companies Marathon Oil and Talisman Energy stopped shale gas fracking in Poland, news emerges that the country’s chief geologist and deputy environment minister Piotr Woźniak spoke out against US companies investing in shale gas extraction in Poland, claims Rzeczpospolita.

The daily quotes a confidential memo by an employee of an embassy of “one of the interested countries”, which was written after a private meeting held in Warsaw on March 13 with 130 investors, businessmen and diplomats in which the politician is reported to have made the comments.

Meanwhile another participant quoted by the daily argues that

People responsible for the energy sector are pushing ahead with the idea of keeping the energy industry in Polish hands.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has fired Justice Minister Jarosław Gowin after just a year and a half in the role. “I don’t have time to explain the minister away every week”, said Tusk, stressing that Gowin, who comes from the same Civic Platform (PO) party, unnecessarily “politicised” issues under his care and expressed opinions that were “troublesome” for the cabinet.

Rzeczpospolita notes that Gowin lost his post after accusing IVF clinics of trading with human embryos and even selling them to Germany where they were allegedly used for experiments.

Gowin will be replaced by Marek Biernacki (PO), a former interior affairs minister in the government of Jerzy Buzek.

Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Wołyń massacre, priests of the Ukrainian Church Council are calling on Poles and Ukrainians to once again express forgiveness for “a chain of evil that goes back several hundred years”.

In 1943-1944, Ukrainian nationalists killed up to 100,000 Poles in Wołyń, which before WWII belonged to Poland. As many as 20,000 Ukrainians are estimated to have died in Polish retaliatory attacks.

Gazeta Wyborcza notes that

this unprecedented appeal […] has the potential to cool tensions ahead of July’s anniversary, which always proves to be a difficult test for Polish-Ukrainian relations.

A senate by-election victory in Rybnik for a candidate backed by the opposition Law and Order (PiS) party has sparked tangible unease in prime minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) party, observes the daily.

Although only a local election, the poll was considered a key bellwether ahead of the European Parliament elections next year.

The defeat of the PO candidate, who came in third, is seen as yet another blow for Tusk, after the inhabitants of the city of Elbląg, considered to be the ruling party’s stronghold, dismissed the mayor and PO-dominated city council last week.

The Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising “was the first such uprising in occupied Europe”, writes the daily on the 70th anniversary of events it considers as part of both Jewish and Polish patriotic tradition.

Expected to fail within a day, 500-750 insurgents put up fierce resistance against some 5000 German troops and fought a hopeless battle that lasted until May 16. In the aftermath of the uprising, over 56,000 people were killed or deported to Nazi death or concentration camps.

The 70th anniversary of the Uprising will be celebrated this Friday by the opening of the Museum the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and a series of ceremonies. And Gazeta Wyborcza quotes a poem by Władysław Broniewski :

Let this be carved as in granite forever in Polish tradition : Our common home has been trampled one common foe we both face / Auschwitz and Dachau unite us and every street execution / And every bar in each prison and each nameless resting place.

“If we want to avoid a demographic catastrophe, we must give women more work and shift some of the parental responsibilities to fathers,” writes the daily.

To encourage dads to take a more active role in bringing up their children, Gazeta Wyborcza calls for a new prospective law on maternity and paternity to be redrafted. At present, the law will provide a period of paid leave to parents, allowing couples to decide how this should be divided between mothers and fathers. The newspaper wants four weeks of this leave to be paid only if the father takes time off work.

With the total fertility rate of 1.38, Poland ranks below the EU average of 1.59 and far below the 2.10 – 2.15 necessary to maintain the population at its current level.

Former Polish president Lech Kaczyński and 95 other victims of the air crash in Smolensk on April 10, 2010 were killed as a result of a bomb attack — this was the main theme of the accident’s third anniversary tributes in Warsaw, organised by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Kaczyński’s twin brother Jarosław.

The official Polish and Russian commissions which investigated the crash blamed pilot error for attempting to land in heavy fog, but the PiS claims explosives were planted on the flight and alleges Russian involvement and complicity from the Polish side.

However, the daily debunks the assassination theories, pointing out that they are contradictory and not based on facts.

“Everyone fends for himself,” begins Gazeta Wyborcza on its frontpage, summing up British Prime Minister David Cameron’s vision of the EU, which he laid out in an interview granted to five European dailies: Le Monde, El Mundo, Il Sole 24 Ore, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Gazeta Wyborcza.

In his view, faced with the competition from rising powers such as China, India or Malaysia, the EU has to be more “open and flexible”. The Warsaw daily notes that –

The word ‘flexible’ has came up several times in the conversation. It is a part of the European vision in which ‘not everyone in Europe does the same things at the same time’. Today, argues Cameron, Great Britain remains outside the Schengen area, while Poland and Sweden are outside the Eurozone.

GW writes that Cameron’s speech in January in which he called for reform of the EU has aroused fears among European politicians that other countries may seek to pick and choose elements of EU membership, thus undermining the Union.

For Christopher Hope, The Daily Telegraph’s senior political correspondent, Cameron’s interview has the feeling of an “apology”, while his ambition that his speech would silence Eurosceptics such as those from the UK Independence Party (Ukip) has not been achieved.

The fact that Mr Cameron has had to [repeat his EU reform strategy] all again, in five languages, less than three months later shows the Bloomberg speech failed and the rise of Ukip [...] has barely been slowed.

“Autumn will see a real battle of manoeuvres: NATO forces will run a large scale training exercise in Poland, recreating a scenario in which they defend Estonia from attack, while Russia and Belarus will repel a strike from the Polish territory,” writes the daily adding it will echo a return to the Cold War.

According to Polska, around 3,000 soldiers from 17 countries will take part in the NATO manoeuvres, which are scheduled to begin in early November.

“The exercise will be a symbol of the new NATO, which is returning to its core principle of defending its member states,” said General Stanisław Koziej, head of the National Security Bureau.

Slovak and Czech authorities are running a “black PR campaign” against Polish food, says a government source quoted by the daily. They publicly stress that the quality of “an overwhelmingly large part” of Polish food is very low. A Czech chief hygiene inspector has even told a television programme, that he “wouldn’t buy Polish food” at all.

“Food exports have become a Polish speciality. In 2012, Poland's food product exports were worth €17bn, compared to €11.7bn in 2008,” explains the daily adding that “local [Czech and Slovak] manufacturers cannot cope with [the Polish] competition.” Consequently, only 42 per cent of food sold in Slovakia is being produced in this country.

The “food war” is going to be one of the main topics of Polish-Slovak consultations to be held today in Poprad, in Slovakia.

The ruling Civic Platform (PO) is willing to accept the main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) party's proposal to hold a national referendum on Poland’s accession to the Eurozone. In return, PiS would back a motion to change the constitution allowing the introduction of the euro.

Currently, article 227 states that “The central bank of the state is the National Bank of Poland, which has an exclusive right to print money, plan and implement currency policy.” Once Poland joins the Eurozone, “all these functions will be taken over by the EBC”.

“PO expects that a battle to win the referendum will be easier than changing the constitution without PiS,” explains the daily.

On March 15, the US government announced the cancellation of the fourth phase of its planned missile defence shield, designed to counter threats to US territory — and, in particular, ballistic missiles from Russia.

The batteries of interceptors established in Romania and Poland to counter missiles from the Middle East, which constitute the second and third phase of the defence system, will remain.

The cancellation of the fourth phase amounts to a “US concession to Russia,” which insisted that this phase “represented a threat to its nuclear capability,” notes the newspaper.

“It’s a breakthrough, but for the time being, only in thinking,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after the Warsaw meeting of the Visegrad Group. The leaders of the Central European alliance sat down with French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on March 6 to discuss plans to coordinate the group’s defence policy.

Gazeta Wyborcza stresses the summit was the first such meeting of the Visegrad 4 (V4) with Merkel and Hollande, something that would have been unthinkable for example during Jacques Chirac’s presidency. “Even though the cooperation between the Visegrad Group countries has never been as smooth as with the Scandinavian countries”, the daily notes -

This is not the same Europe [as during Chirac’s times]. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and even crisis-hit Hungary are not posing such problems to Europe as the countries of the south.

Also the Slovak daily Pravda underlines the presence of Merkel-Hollande at the V4 summit in Warsaw and further reports that "Slovakia will participate in a special Visegrad battle group". The V4 countries signed a letter of intent to set up a joint defence battle group until 2016 composed of approximately 3,000 soldiers. Poland would assure the main part of the unit’s military strength, up to 1,600 soldiers, with the Czech Republic offering mainly paramedics and logistics, while Hungary provides military engineering and Slovakia the expertise on weapons of mass destruction.

A record 244,000 immigrants from the East, mainly the Ukraine, came to Poland to work legally in 2012. But that is not enough, writes the daily, stressing that according to a report by the Energy-Europe Foundation, “in order to avoid depopulation, 5.2m people must come to live in Poland by year 2050.”

“We need them but we don’t know how to keep them for good,” laments Rzeczpospolita quoting Prof. Krystyna Iglicka, a demographer and author of the report. In her view, Poland is not an immigrant-friendly country as immigrants find it difficult to obtain permanent residency rights and work permits.

Ahead of the parliamentary elections next September, the biggest EU country joins the anti-shale gas coalition and hurries to draw up regulations restricting the use of shale gas technology, reports the Warsaw daily, which quotes an interview with Chancellor Angela Merkel published by Straubinger Tagblatt.

“This is a replay of the French scenario, where shale gas exploration was banned 18 months before the presidential election”, explains Gazeta Wyborcza. The newspaper points out that “the anti-shale gas coalition in Paris and Berlin will strengthen the faction of EU politicians opposed to exploration of these deposits, which may have a negative impact on plans to extract shale gas in Poland”.

The Sejm, the Polish parliament, will vote on ratification of the fiscal compact today with the majority of the parties, except Law and Justice (PiS), the main opposition party, and its minuscule spin-off, Solidarity Poland, likely to approve it.

During the debate held yesterday, PM Donald Tusk urged the deputies to hold a “positive discussion” on Poland’s accession to the eurozone, which could be possible when “the country is 100 per cent ready”. So far no deadline has been set. However, he admitted it could be a “task for a generation”.

On the other hand, PiS MPs lamented that “joining the eurozone would make Poland dependent on a Central Committee in Brussels”.

With employment in January dropping by 0.8 per cent compared to the previous year and salaries unchanged or even reduced, Poles are tightening their belts.

They are cutting back on expenses, cancelling gym memberships and buying second-hand clothes.

According to GW’s survey, “one third of Polish employees are concerned that they might be fired at any time.”

Polish “PM Donald Tusk is negotiating an EU budget in Brussels that will be decisive for the pace of the development of Poland’s civilization,” writes the conservative daily, stressing that “this could be the last such a big EU budget, so a good deal is crucial”.

According to EU Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, if integration of the euro zone proceeds, “the next budget negotiations won’t be that important as more funds will be dedicated to finance the EU’s core, that is the euro zone”.

“This is the last time we may get really big money from the EU to catch up with the West,” says the Warsaw daily at the start of the European Council summit dedicated to agreeing the EU 2014-2020 budget. What the meeting will bring still remains a mystery.

The compromise Council President Herman Van Rompuy will bring to the table – jokingly nicknamed “the budget submarine” by Brussels diplomats, still lies submerged, to avoid it being torpedoed at the beginning of the meeting. Last October Van Rompuy offered Poland €72.4bn as part of the cohesion policy, now Prime Minister Donald Tusk hopes to negotiate 300 bn złoty, or €71.8bn.

A total of 54 countries took part in secret CIA detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects after the September 11 attacks, according to a report by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI).

Some countries are said to have let CIA planes use their airspace or refuel, others, including Poland and Lithuania, hosted so called “black sites” where terrorist suspects were transported, interrogated and tortured.

Poland registered the fastest e-commerce growth in Europe, enthuses the conservative daily, with its largest auction site Allegro increasing its 2012 revenue by 17 per cent to more than 10bn zlotys (€2.5bn).

In total, Poles spent 24bn zlotys (€6bn) on the net last year (an increase of more than 30 per cent). According to the daily, the economic slowdown and austerity resulted in Poles turning to the Internet as a source of cheaper products.

“There could be thousands people in Poland who have been sexually abused by paedophile priests,” writes Ekke Overbeek, a Dutch journalist based in Poland, in his book Lękajcie się (Be afraid).

“Is this a ticking bomb in the Church?” wonders the daily, noting that the author not only describes broken lives of 12 sexually abused people, but also strongly condemns the still influential Polish Church for not acting “effectively enough” to eradicate paedophilia in its ranks.

Poland may not receive the promised €11bn in EU structural funds for road construction unless it settles claims of bid-rigging concerning three big motorway projects, a spokesperson for the European Commission (EC) told the daily.

The Polish government says it is shocked by the EC position, saying the country was the victim of price-fixing in relation to the road construction tenders, and informed the EC about irregularities in the process as early as 2010.

According to a Ministry of Labour forecast, 35 per cent of the estimated 390,000 children to be born this year in Poland will be raised by families which “barely make ends meet”, where per capita monthly income does not exceed 539 zlotys (€135).

As a result, 132,000 parents will claim social allowance for the poorest citizens. “It’s a myth that poverty and destitution affects only older people,” says an expert quoted by the daily, adding that “Poland is certainly not a country for young people.”

On January 25, the Polish parliament (Sejm) dismissed three draft bills on civil partnership (two prepared by the opposition and one by the ruling Civic Platform – PO). Surprisingly, despite PM Donald Tusk’s calls to back his party draft bill, 46 conservative PO MPs led by Justice Minister Jarosław Gowin voted against the project, stirring widespread anger.

Soon after the vote, all dissenters along with Donald Tusk received more than 400,000 emails criticizing them for “prejudice” and neglecting “the interests of thousands of Poles living in informal unions”.

On January 27, National Geographic channel will broadcast the first international film about the Smoleńsk air crash in which Polish president Lech Kaczyński was killed on April 10, 2010.

The film “is likely to create a stir” as it undermines a report by the Russian state committee investigating the causes of the tragedy, and backs most of the conclusions of a Polish inquiry led by former interior minister Jerzy Miller.

The EU has eventually reached a budget compromise, say sources in Brussels quoted by the economic daily. The deal rules out further cuts in cohesive funds and the Common Agricultural Policy, which is “a success from Poland’s point of view.”

The budget deal is to be sealed at the EU summit taking place at the beginning of February.

“With industrial production shrinking by 10.6 per cent in December and unemployment likely to reach 15 per cent, the beginning of the year brought news of a looming employment crisis,” leads the daily, highlighting that 2013 may be “more difficult for the Polish economy compared to other crisis years.”

One of the reasons is a ”dramatic” economic slowdown in Germany which is Poland’s main economic partner. Latest estimates put Germany’s GDP growth in 2013 at 0.4 per cent and not 1 per cent as previously predicted.

EU countries will send troops to Mali, following a meeting today of the foreign ministers of the 27 EU member states where they are expected to support the French intervention in the country, the daily reports. Poland will ultimately send a dozen or so instructors as part of the EU mission aimed at training the Malian army to fight Islamic terrorists that are destabilising the situation in the country’s north.

Business leaders are pressuring the government to reject the single European patent, arguing that “solutions provided by the single patent scheme favour highly technologically developed countries”. Meanwhile for Poland, which has just started building a knowledge-based economy, the new single patent will be “very costly” and risky for the applicants. The campaign seems to be effective as “the government has begun hesitating” over whether to sign the single patent agreement.

The Polish parliament (Sejm) will next week debate three draft bills giving civil partnership rights to homosexuals couples. All three proposals, two of them presented by the Left Democratic Alliance and Palikot’s Movement and one by the ruling Civic Platform, do not grant gay couples in civil partnerships the same rights as married couples, and “there is no majority yet in the Sejm to pass any of the projects,” stresses the daily.