What goes in Poland on 30th of June.
Record high summer electricity consumption in Poland
The rainy Wednesday morning did not foreshadow the fact that Poland will see the biggest demand for electricity in its history. According to the Thursday edition of the Rzeczpospolita daily, electricity consumption broke the record.
On Wednesday at 1.30 PM the record was broken: we needed as much as 22 883 MW. The Rzeczpospolita daily reported that this was caused by the upcoming heat wave, against which the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management had warned.
So far the highest demand for electricity in the so-called summer peak was recorded by PSE SA on 24 June 2016 – 22 750 MW.
„The growing power consumption during the vacation period is caused by the increasing popularity of air conditioners both in offices, as well as apartments,” the article explained. „At the same time Polish power plants, which are mostly fuelled by coal, need huge amounts of water for cooling. In case of long heat waves and droughts there might be problems. Especially that the power plants are old and prone to malfunctions,” the daily wrote.
„According to experts, this summer PSE SA seems to be better prepared for balancing because it has a number of intervention tools that can be used just in case. Either way, we may expect the power demand to break further records this summer,” said the article.
Yellow card for the winter package
On Wednesday, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, Minister of Energy, reiterated Poland’s views, manifested in commencing the yellow card procedure, on the EU’s winter package proposition, i.e. EC’s new regulations on the energy market.
The minister did not want to confirm what support the Polish proposition will eventually gain among other EU states. He said the negotiations were still on. In his opinion, the most populous countries would determine the outcome.
„The negotiations are ongoing (…) Today everything depends on the position of the most populous EU states,” said the minister to the journalists gathered at the International Mining Forum in the Polish town of Jastrzębie Zdrój in the Silesia region. The Forum gathered representatives of scientific and practical engineering communities in the mining sector from a number of countries around the world.
Minimum wage for the health service sector
Last Thursday the Senate adopted, without any amendments, the government’s act on calculating the minimum wage for medical workers. The target minimum wage will be introduced after the transitional period at the end of 2021.
The act was supported by 55 senators while 26 were against, nobody abstained. Thus, the Senate did not have a vote on the amendments introduced by opposition MPs, who proposed, among others, higher increase of wages for medical workers.
According to the bill, the lowest basic wage will be equal to the multiplication of the job indicator for a given profession and the average wage in the previous year (until the end of 2019 the amount PLN 3.9 thousand gross will be used instead of the average wage).
The target minimum basic wage will be reached after the transition period, i.e. by the end of 2021. The first increase – by at least 10% of the difference between the basic wage and the minimum wage will be introduced as of the 1st of July this year. Later on, the pay will be increased each year by at least 20% of the said difference.
Two-quality Europe
„In Bulgaria the food sold by large western companies has lower quality than in the west. There are double standards – different for the western and eastern European markets,” said Lubomir Kulinski, head of the Bulgarian Agency for Food Safety.
His statement was related to a report, which presented the results of a research on food products produced by the same brands and sold in supermarkets in Germany, Austria and Bulgaria. The report was published last Wednesday.
In May representatives of the Bulgarian Ministry of Agriculture, visited those countries and bought 31 food products at the local supermarkets, those included chocolate products, conditioners for children, juices, dairy products and sausages. They bought the same products in Bulgaria and then analyzed them at five independent labs.
„The products were identical, they were sold under the same brand in three different countries”, Kulinski explained. The tests revealed that about 20% of the goods sold in Bulgaria had different ingredients.