PiS wants to separate Warsaw from the rest of Mazowsze

The current government wants to detach Warsaw from the rest of the Mazovian voivodeship and create two separate voivodeships in its place. The most telling indication yet came on Wednesday when Law and Justice MP Jacek Sasin directly revealed such intentions in a talk with TOK FM. "The party wishes the capital, along with its surrounding suburbs, to become an independent voivodeship" he said. This declaration comes on the heels of various mixed messages sent by people within the PiS party in recent days. Sasin emphasized that the details of the reform are yet to be decided upon, and that the new administrative division would only come into life after 2020. The idea of separating Warsaw from the rest of Mazowsze has attracted a lot of controversy, with members of the opposition party Civic Platform questioning how this would impact the financial standing of the region - the EU has already allotted PLN 2 billion to the region in funding for the 2014-2020 time period, while the debt of the region currently exceeds PLN 1,5 billion.  Any division within the Mazowsze region would require both sums to be somehow divided, a process that will undoubtedly be difficult and contentious, as Gazeta Wyborcza wrote.