Salaries of Polish MPs will grow over 40% after a hugely divisive bill hiking the pay of public officials was passed by the parliament on August 14.

The passing of the bill led to nationwide outrage as people across Poland are seeing their jobs gone or pay reduced in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has pushed CEE’s largest economy to the first recession in 30 years.

The leader of the United Right coalition, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, tabled the bill, which enjoyed rare cross-party support of 386 votes in favour with only 33 votes against and 15 abstentions.

PiS reportedly struck a deal with most of the opposition saying it would not even table the bill if it did not receive wide support. Most of the opposition MPs complied, leading to a storm in the media and on platforms like Twitter.

PiS said that the bill introduced a transparent system of paying public officials by benchmarking their salaries to that of a Supreme Court judge. 

The bill also increases state subvention for political parties by a factor of 1.5 and introduced a salary for the wife of the president. Poland’s first lady is currently Agata Kornhauser-Duda, often criticised for engaging in little public activity and shunning media.

Including extras such as money for maintaining an office, Polish MPs are going to enjoy a pay hike of nearly 60%.

“We supported [the increase], as we believe that systemic changes in remuneration of public officials are necessary. A country in which the deputy finance minister earns PLN7,000 [€1,592], and companies can buy any MP for PLN2,000 is a country galloping towards corruption,” Barbara Nowacka, an MP for the biggest opposition party, Civic Coalition (KO), said in a statement on Facebook.

But those MPs who did not support the bill did not mince words condemning the opposition’s voting hand in hand with PiS to grant themselves money during a recession.

“I have been a member of Civic Platform [the main part of KO] for the last five years. This is the end. With the greatest recession in history and the tragedies of people in recent and upcoming months, raising salaries by 58% … is inexplicable,” Tomasz Cimoszewicz said, also on Facebook.

Only the MPs of the social democratic party Razem – part of the Left grouping, the majority of which supported the bill – the far-right Konfederacja and individual MPs from KO and other parties voted against or abstained.