Long-Term: Standard and Poor’s cuts Poland’s rating

WARSAW: Global ratings agency Standard and Poor’s cut its long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating for Poland by one notch Friday to ‘BBB+’, citing government moves ‘weakening institutions’. “The downgrade reflects our view that Poland’s system of institutional checks and balances has been eroded significantly,” the ratings agency said in a statement, pointing to recent legislative changes pushed through by the EU and NATO member’s new right-wing government. Standard and Poor’s warned in its statement that “the constitutional court’s ability to work efficiently and independently will likely be undermined, in our view, by changes to the court’s composition and decision-making process.” It also pointed to a new media law that gives the government extensive control over management of public broadcasters and measures allowing it to change the structure of the civil service.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2016.

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