Slow and steady, or just lazy?

On the occasion of his sixth month in power, Prime Minister Donald Tusk last week summed up his government's activity to date. According to the PM, work on reforms is being carried out systematically and the government's primary goal at the moment is to raise the standard of living in Poland.

"We've adopted eight bills [so far] in the first half of the year," said Tusk, stressing that the simplification of the law was a better indicator of his government's work than the number of bills proposed. "We have decided to follow good European examples," Tusk told the media.

"My cabinet aims above all to improve the quality of Poles' lives ... but it is doing this without revolution," the PM said. 

Tusk expects unemployment to drop below 10 percent by the end of the year and GDP growth to reach 5.5 percent. The key challenge is keeping the growth of prices below that of salaries, Tusk said.

Earlier in the week, Law and Justice (PiS) chairman Jarosław Kaczyński criticized the government and the current state of politics. In an interview on Polish Radio Jedynka's morning show, "Sygnały Dnia," Kaczyński concluded that Polish politics was in a sorry state and that a number of current ministers were unproductive.

"The work of Minister Ćwiąkalski is one big scandal. We can also add these doubts to Minister Grad. And then you can multiply these doubts in regards to all the ministers, because they don't do anything. One word can be inferred here - laziness," said Kaczyński. "There's one minister that actually does something, but he does it very poorly. I'm referring to Minister Sikorski."

According to a survey by CBOS last week, around 50 percent of Poles had a positive opinion about PM Tusk's Cabinet. A poll by TNS OBOP, however, showed that 48 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the present government and 79 percent of respondents claimed that it had not resolved any significant issue yet.