NEWS

25/03/2020

15:25

Grodzki:

After Sejm session, an additional Senate session likely next week, possibly in the first half

Michał Olech

In the coming days, the Sejm will convene to debate the so-called anti-crisis shield. These epidemic times are difficult, but no one will relieve the Sejm and the Senate of their constitutional duties, especially since millions of Polish women and men are working in various positions to ensure that the economic rhythm and supply chains are maintained, at least to a minimal extent. Power must exist to serve its citizens. The anti-crisis shield is primarily intended to protect health, combat the epidemic, but above all, to support employees, employers, and all those who are incurring unavoidable losses in the fight against the epidemic threatening us. Therefore, even though the Senate was originally planned for the end of April, after the Sejm session, an additional urgent Senate session will be held next week, likely in the first half of the week, although senators will be notified first. This is to ensure that we can enact regulations as quickly as possible, making it easier for all of us to overcome the epidemic – stated Tomasz Grodzki in a recording published on social media. It is necessary that before the plenary session, which I would like to be very brief, small groups of senators, and previously members of parliament, convene and work out the broadest possible compromise regarding the anti-crisis shield, so that the plenary session is as short as possible. We will, of course, adhere to all sanitary and epidemiological regulations – the Speaker of the Senate continued. Until now, the age at which a child's benefit is received is 8 years. We would like to extend this age, because it is also difficult to leave a 9 or 10-year-old alone. We would like this benefit not to last another 14 days, but to be determined until the schools reopen. We want entrepreneurs to be exempted from ZUS (Social Insurance Institution), for there to be loan holidays, and to take care of the transport system, where transport company owners are having trouble paying their next lease installments. There are many such detailed issues, and we want to improve them before the plenary sessions of the Sejm and the Senate, so that the plenary gathering is as short as possible – he emphasized.

Michał Olech