No more privileges for the Ukrainians! We can't afford this!

konfederacja.pl 5 months ago

Confederate press conference attended by Deputy Marshal of Parliament Krzysztof Bosak and Dr. Filip Furman, 27 January 2024.

Krzysztof Bosak:
– Today, together with Dr. Philip Furman, we present a bill which the Confederation has already presented. It is simply a task that another parties are talking about, but it has not been presented, namely a task ending financial, social and wellness privileges of citizens with Ukrainian passports in Poland.

Such a privilege came on the basis of the Act of March 12, 2022, a speciality that introduces 2 nations to support 1 state. Let me remind you for the sake of clarity: the Confederacy in its entirety and as the only 1 was the political formation that then voted against and said from the beginning that this is unfair, irrational and that we cannot afford it. That we can't afford it, we've experienced it over the last fewer years, I'm going to show it on numbers. But the urgent challenge is simply to reverse this privilege.

I want to make it clear and point out that this is not about discrimination against any nationality. It is only about dropping citizens with Ukrainian passports to the level of any another foreigner who is in Poland, who, in order to have access to any social or wellness system, must usually pay taxes, must pay contributions, must have the position of legal residence usually obtained in the course of the procedure. There's 1 exception to that right now. These are all Ukrainians.

Ukrainian citizens who entered this fresh strategy were privileged even against the background of their fellow countrymen who had been here before! Who inactive gotta pay the wellness contribution, unlike those who came later.

Many times, I remember how journalists aggressively reacted to our memory, even if we mentioned that there were privileges for Ukrainians in Poland and asked for examples of these privileges. They were laughing at it, saying it was any kind of invention. It is hard to get a more serious privilege than access to the full strategy – very comprehensive, 1 must admit – of the wellness strategy in Poland without paying the wellness contribution in Poland!

Even the Polish unemployed must go and registry with the Labour Office to have legal access to wellness benefits. erstwhile a kid is born, they should be registered in the system. meantime someone with a Ukrainian passport just gets everything for free, on good morning, with beautiful eyes.

This has triggered large-scale wellness tourism. It's off the record. The higher they are aware of: at infirmary directors level, at government level, at the level of this administration liable for wellness care expenditure. They clearly see how increased the number of Ukrainians utilizing various kinds of benefits that are not performed for free or are not performed at all in Ukraine and are performed with us. On the another hand, nobody wants to say it publically – but it comes out in numbers.

What we request is simply to remove this privilege. Not as Rafał Trzaskowski says, to leave the privilege for those who work, to take only those who do not work and only in the 800 plus case.

What we wrote in our bill, applies to all privileged after 24 February 2022, covers the full scope of social and wellness benefits. We shift all these citizens to the position of Poles in their own country or foreigners in our country. So they gotta pay taxes, they gotta legally stay here to access our system.

How many Ukrainian citizens presently benefit from this? I say “Ukrainian citizens”, not Ukrainians, due to the fact that first it is not about nationality, and second with Ukrainian passports came people of very many different nationalities! besides Russians, besides Georgians, besides representatives of various another nationalities. We besides know that it is not so hard to get a Ukrainian passport – or at least it was not before the war, now most likely a fewer men want to take a Ukrainian passport, due to the fact that it involves a work to fight and to collect, while before the war the substance was much simpler and little risky, and we know that not only Ukrainians had these passports.

980,000 Ukrainians entered this system. That's a immense number. This has resulted in the overall wellness costs of this million people with Ukrainian passports that have not been disclosed to the public! Data at the end of 2023, due to the fact that these are the latest data that was given to the public – in the following year these data were hidden, at least to our cognition – it was PLN 700 million. So if we add data for the next year and a half that we don't know or next year, I think It can be freely over a billion zlotyswhich has been spent solely on this treatment.

From Łukasz Kozłowski, chief economist of the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs, quote for Business Insider, we know that queues have increased by 70% over the last 2 years.

Does anyone else remember the information we were given erstwhile there was an increase in wellness care spending supported by pandemic challenges and an increase in wellness contributions, and it was said that this would lead to repairing the wellness strategy and shortening queues? Does anyone else remember that benefits limits were abolished and everyone had access to everything? Unfortunately, there was an other effect.

Despite the gigantic extra money in parallel pumped into the wellness system, or even before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine under the pretext of a pandemic. Further, of course, we have, in addition to wellness protection, the subject of the alleged social, i.e. all kinds of social benefits, which are besides utilized by foreigners and in a privileged way on the basis of this circumstantial Ukrainian citizens.

These are 800+ programs, Good Start, 300+, Active Parent, Property Credit privileged earlier, now this program fortunately after our force is not renewed. The cost of 800 plus for Ukrainians alone in 2024 was PLN 2.8 billion! Almost 3 billion zlotys only on 800+. If you number all the programs I mentioned, it's a fewer billion zlotys.

And from the answer of the Ministry of Finance about the number of taxes paid by Ukrainian citizens, all in Poland, we know that it would be about PLN 2.5 billion. So you can see that more than taxed by Ukrainian citizens. Of course to check whether the Ministry of Finance data is complete.

Data on social safety contributions should be added to this. But no substance what, even if that balance is positive, we cannot favour another nation in our own country. This is simply unfair, foolish and sends bad, foolish, harmful impulses towards another nation, for example, that Polish interests in Ukraine do not request to be taken into account at all, due to the fact that Poland simply gives everything for free.

These are our proposals, and thus the withdrawal of the privilege established under the Ukrainian Aid peculiar Act of 12 March 2022. As at the first press conference, 2 years ago, we said: this is not something against another nation. If individual is helping Ukraine or the Ukrainians, it is noble if he is doing so with his own money and with his own will. We never minded.

But there must be order in our country. And this order is that citizens of their own country are in the first place, then there are those we want to host on the basis of all residence procedures, that is, legally resident foreigners, and then there are foreigners, that is, the remainder of the world, billions of people with whom we have no relationship.

If individual wants to enter into relations with our country, to benefit from what erstwhile and present generations have worked out, then he must go through a average trial or have a exile status, which has never happened in this mass of millions of Ukrainians, or more than a million who have passed through Poland and passed through here. It's besides a remarkable fact. These people were never registered as refugees..