Editor's note: Chaos reigns

This turmoil started immediately after the elections when the vision of a Civic Platform-Law and Justice coalition turned out to be a mirage. The markets became anxious of the political instability, investors started to sell off Polish T-bonds and the złoty dropped in value. Despite the new government winning the vote of confidence, i.e. formally coming into existence, the turmoil did not evolve into calm.

In addition the members of the new government have been sending contradictory signals. Teresa Lubińska, the new Finance Minister, is the leader in this category. Within the last two weeks she has made two unforgivable blunders in the international arena.

It all started with the notorious hypermarkets, that according to Lubińska are not welcome in Poland. She labeled the investments of foreign concerns in the shopping centers as "unproductive." For a company like Tesco, the biggest British investor in Poland, it must have been a real slap in the face.

But the government doesn't seem to be paying too much attention. A couple of days later the Committee for Bank Supervision (KNB), at a meeting attended for the first time by its new deputy president and Deputy Finance Minister Cezary Mech, once again failed to make a statement about the merger of the BPH and Pekao banks resulting from the wider European merger of UniCredito and HVB.

The European Commission keeps urging us - Poland is the only European country who still hasn't given its consent for the merger. The Finance Minister, however, sees no problem in that, and openly declares she is not in favor of the merger.

Yet on Thursday, in his roadmap for the new government, Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz assured the public that Poland really cares about foreign investment. Contradictory and worrying signals. If that continues, the chorus of critical comments will be all this government hears from abroad for a long while.

Eliza Durka

Editor-in-chief