Poland has become the 17th European Union member state to ban fur farming .
President Karol Nawrocki signed the legislation into law yesterday but vetoed a bill that would have banned keeping dogs on chains.
The opposition Conservatives (PiS)-aligned Nawrocki approved the legislation put forward by the ruling centre-left coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk despite the fact that Poland is currently one the world’s leading fur producers.
In 2023, Poland was the largest producer of fox and mink furs in Europe and the second-largest in the world, behind only China. Production has been falling, though, and the industry has long faced claims that it was mistreating animals.
As of now 17 EU Member States have banned fur farming, with the total number of European countries with bans being 23.
The implementation of the growing number of fur-farming bans, with recent additions including Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Estonia, varies with some already in place and others having a future effective date.
In Poland, the legislation has introduced an eight-year phase-out period and has introduced a compensation scheme for breeders who close their businesses early.
Nawrocki said he had chosen to approve the fur-farming ban because it is supported by more than two-thirds of Poles, including rural residents, according to polls. “Their voice cannot be ignored,” he said.
He added that he had “listened carefully to farmers” when making his decision and noted that their “demands are included in the bill I signed”, including the eight-year transition period and compensation payments.
The bill received support in parliament from the ruling majority and most PiS MPs. That meant there was potentially the required three-fifths majority to overturn a presidential veto.
The only group that totally opposed the ban was the right-wing Confederation party whose politicians criticised the President’s decision.
“Unfortunately, President Karol Nawrocki, under the diktat of the radical Left, agreed to the destruction of another branch of Polish agriculture,” wrote Sławomir Mentzen, one of the Confederation party leaders.
On the same day, though, Nawrocki decided to veto a separate bill that would have prohibited keeping dogs on chains and introduced minimum kennel sizes.
It was the minimum size of kennels set at 20 square metres that led the him to veto the legislation, saying “there are apartments in Warsaw smaller than that”.
The provision of such kennels was seen as too large an expense for rural dwellers and led the President to pledge he was proposing his own bill to parliament . That would include limiting the practice of keeping dogs on chains and vary kennel requirements according to the size of dogs.
The ruling coalition attacked the President for his veto and Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty, pledged that parliament would vote in an attempt to overturn it.
Czarzasty also repeated his claim that Nawrocki was overusing his power of veto and that “it is the role of the government to govern and the role of parliament to pass legislation”.
A vote on overturning the veto is unlikely to be successful, though, since PiS will not back any action against the President who is an ally.
Speaking on government controlled radio Trójka Jacek Sasin, a senior party member said: “PiS does not want to do anything which devalues the presidential veto.”
Since taking office in August, Nawrocki has vetoed more than a dozen government bills while also regularly submitting his own legislation to parliament that Czarzasty has barred from being debated.
The President has also blocked the promotion of 46 judges whom he considers questioned the status of their peers. He also barred the appointment of more than 100 security service officers in response to him having been stopped from meeting the chiefs of the four Polish security services.
The invitation for the security chiefs to brief the President was made in writing with the PM notified.
Tusk forbade the security chiefs to attend and they did not notify the President that they were not meeting him.
