The EU and green justice warriors will probably also be upset Poland is supporting Brexit and is a new home for US Air Force predator drone facilities.

The last time we visited Poland, eco-activists were upset with its continued reliance on coal power.

The shrieks of green justice warriors will likely grow louder. Poland will continue with plans to dig a canal between its main eastern coastline and the Baltic Sea despite concerns among activists and in the European Union that it could damage the environment.

The Vistula Spit is a heavily wooded sandbank 55 km (34 miles) long but less than 2 km wide which encloses a coastal lagoon. Poland shares both the lagoon and the spit with the neighboring Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Currently, the only access to the lagoon from the Baltic Sea is a channel at the Russian end of the spit. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), deeply distrustful of Russia, says a canal is needed for both security and economic reasons. …Defending the project, which is estimated to cost 900 million zlotys ($237 million), Poland’s minister for maritime affairs, Marek Grobarczyk, said: “The first and basic reason for the construction … is a threat from the east.” “This is the border of the EU, NATO, and above all of Poland, and it cannot really be controlled now because ships can only enter the Vistula Lagoon with Russia’s approval,” he said, adding that work would start in the second half of 2019.

Poland may be encouraging resistance to EU from others as well. The Poles are preparing to support the British should Brexit proceed without an EU blessing.

Poland’s government has agreed to a backup plan in case Britain crashes out of the European Union without an agreement. The government said in a statement after its weekly Cabinet meeting Tuesday that it agreed to a draft bill that will protect the approximately 6,000 British citizens living in Poland who will lose their status as EU citizens. It said they will be given 21 months — that is until Dec. 31, 2020 — to submit an application for residency status in Poland.

Finally, on March 1, US Air Forces in Europe has opened a new set of facilities at Miroslawiec Air Base in Poland to help accommodate the Air National Guardsmen and contractors operating predator drones (MQ-9 Reapers) there.

…Poland was chosen for the mission due to its “strategic location in Eastern Europe,” Auburn Davis, a civilian U.S. Air Forces in Europe official, told Air Force Times in May. Air Forces in Europe has not provided many details regarding where the Reapers are flying. Service officials have only said that the drones are providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in support of American foreign policy, as well as gathering force protection data for U.S. and international partners, according to an Air Forces Europe news release.

Happily, Poland seems to be making the decisions that best suit the Polish people. That should really unnerve the EU and green justice warriors.



