THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT OF THE 2019 ELECTION CAMPAIGNS IN POLAND BY THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE SEJM AND SENATE

Abstract

The authors assume that the results of the 2019 elections in Poland to the European Parliament and the Sejm and the Senate infl uence not only the transformation of the country’s party system and its socio-political development in the coming years, but also the place and importance of Poland’s interstate relations with Ukraine in general and specifi c problems of large-scale Ukrainian labor migration to Poland in particular.The completion of the elections to the European Parliament of the 9th cadence actually gave rise to the election campaign to the Sejm and Senate of the Xth convocation.The predominant practice of most political parties has been to provide candidates of Ukrainian descent or immigrants from Ukraine (despite even a minimal number of them against the background of the Ukrainian national minority and newly naturalized citizens of the Republic of Poland) for the most part, starting places in the relevant regional party lists. Despite the noticeable growth of broad Ukrainian subjects since the fall of 2013, fi rst in Polish foreign and then domestic politics, this has not, however, been refl ected in a corresponding quantitative and qualitative conversion following the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and the Sejm and Senate of the Republic of Poland. The 2019 elections, among other t hings, draw attention not only to the place and role of the Ukrainian national minority in the political life of Poland, but also to indicate the political participation of Polish citizens from among the new migrants of the 1990s – 2010s, in view of the growing the extent of naturalization as Polish citizens of our country of origin, and the diff erences between diff erent socially active environments of Polish citizens of Ukrainian descent. Internal processes among politically active Ukrainians in Poland who have the right to vote allow us to speak of a departure from the prevailing sympathies with the Civic Platform over the decades in favor of new left-wing political projects.