Poland inundated with a manipulating campaign. Sasin is behind her, and the PiS president has given him the green light

In Gdynia and Sokółka, in Żory, Kraków and Poznań, on voivodeship and national roads, villages and cities, on television, at stations and on trains, in newspapers and on electricity bills – Poland was flooded with a campaign on “expensive electricity” within two weeks through the fault of the EU “.

How the campaign manipulates has been explained and corrected many times already. It was done by experts and it was done by the European Commission, it was done by the media (and educators like.

Now we know more and more about the scale of the project and who is behind it. We do not know how much it could have cost, because the companies hide behind a secret.

Scale? Huge. Costs? “Mystery”

The campaign started with individual billboards and spread over the whole of Poland. In Warsaw, advertisements appeared, among others on huge media in the city center. But more were shown in all parts of Poland, from large cities to villages.

During the day we got signals, sometimes with photos,. Sometimes there are several in one place, in large cities there may be several dozen of them. And this is just one element of the campaign.

Advertisements were also posted on internet portals (Gazeta.pl refused to publish them) and traditional media. According to the reports, the spots are broadcast by state-owned stations, including TVP, as well as private stations from Polsat Group. They were published in the press, including newspapers belonging to Orlen or “Tele Tygodnia”. They are on PKP carriers in trains and at stations. The campaign is scheduled to run from January 24 to February 28.

In addition, a slightly expanded version – and even more misleading – is sent by energy producers directly to consumers.

The campaign was commissioned by the Economic Society of Polish Power Plants, namely five of its members. These are companies of state-owned energy producers: Tauron Wytwarzanie, Enea Wytwarzanie, Enea Połaniec, PGE GiEK and PGNiG Termika.

We sent a request to all of these companies and TGPE to provide information on how much the campaign cost. Let us emphasize – Enea, Tauron, PGNiG and PGE are companies with the share of the State Treasury. We have not yet received any responses from individual companies.

TGPE wrote that “costs incurred in connection with the Educational Project are a business secret. Information on the entities responsible for the preparation and implementation of the campaign is also a business secret. “We have asked for the justification of the decision to refuse to provide information and we are waiting for a response.

Although the exact amount that companies spent on the campaign is unknown, it can be assumed that due to its scale it is huge. Hundreds of billboards were probably hung all over Poland. It is already at least hundreds of thousands of zlotys. And on top of that, advertising in traditional and online media, at PKP … Campaign costs can be counted in millions of zlotys.

Sasin and Kaczyński

The energy producers officially stand behind the campaign. The campaign – especially since it is huge and political in nature – was carried out at the behest of politicians.

As we have established, for several months the United Right has been discussing how to talk about high electricity prices and how to convince people that it is mainly the European Union’s climate policy to blame for the increases in electricity prices. This was solved in two ways.

On the one hand – we hear in the PiS camp – especially Deputy Minister of Climate Paweł Ozdoba from Solidarna Polska argued that you need to clearly indicate on the energy bills sent to people how large part of the price is the cost of CO2 emission allowances. Solidarity Poland is the most critical of climate policy – and the EU as such – part of the United Right. Zbigniew Ziobro postulated, inter alia, vetoing the most important EU climate legislation (). In matters of energy, the entire government of the United Right now de facto speaks the language of “Zibrists”.

To make this possible, the Minister of Climate and Environment, Anna Moskwa, issued a regulation at the beginning of January.

In line with the statement attached to the invoice, energy companies must present a rounded structure of the price of energy production costs, including the ratio of the price of emission allowances to the wholesale energy price. Individual recipients receive such information, although they do not pay the wholesale price.

On the other hand, a billboard campaign was launched. The idea is similar, but the communication channel is already very public and large-format. – A few months ago there were talks about how to show that electricity is expensive due to the EU policy, using simple graphics with a light bulb – says an informed person from the ruling camp.

– The idea for the campaign with the bulb was taken over by Jacek Sasin. Without it, energy companies could not take any action – convinces the politician of the ruling camp, familiar with the case. Sasin is the head of the Ministry of State Assets to which state-owned companies are subordinate. As our interlocutor adds, The president of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, also gave the green light to the campaign.

How the electricity price campaign is manipulated

The campaign of state-owned production companies is to inform about the reasons for rising energy prices. The posters say that “60 costs of energy production” is “the EU climate tax”.

In fact – as he calculates – the cost of emission allowances is about 23 percent. the amount on the electricity bill. The authors of the campaign defend themselves and say that it is not about fees paid by consumers, but about costs for producers. However, the nationwide campaign is clearly aimed at individual recipients. And the slogan “climate policy = expensive energy” and the percentages shown on the light bulb may suggest to people that it is 60 percent. the bills they pay result from the “climate tax”.

Secondly, the very term “climate tax” is misleading. It may suggest that it is about money that we “pay” to the European Union’s coffers. Meanwhile, it is the Polish government – like the governments of other countries – that sells emission allowances and makes money on it. Only in the last year, thanks to the rising prices of these allowances, the government earned a record 25 billion zlotys. This money could be spent on emission-free energy sources such as windmills, solar panels or a nuclear power plant. These would provide electricity without emitting CO2 and without the need to purchase raw materials such as coal or gas, thanks to which consumers would pay lower bills.

Third, it is not a “climate policy” fee. Energy producers pay for littering the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. This works on the “polluter pays” principle. Were it not for the fee for emission allowances, energy producers could treat the Earth’s atmosphere as a free garbage can, where millions of tons of carbon dioxide can be deposited without (financial) consequences.

The aim of the campaign may be simply to blame the EU for the more expensive electricity, so that anger at the high prices is not targeted at the government. This would not be the first time the “bad union” has become a whipping boy for the authorities. However, many observers emphasize how much the campaign is similar to that carried out in the UK before the Brexit referendum. Politicians such as Jacek Sasin and Zbigniew Ziobro are already talking, for example, about “announcing the climate package” or “leaving the emissions trading system”. However, climate policy is one of the key issues of the EU, enshrined in various documents (to which Poland also agreed). Therefore, you cannot simply “pronounce” climate policy – not without leaving the European Union.