Covid Poland: Hundreds of tourist-trade businesses DEFY lockdown

Ski slopes, restaurants and hotels in Poland’s tourist-reliant mountainous south have announced they will defy anti-virus restrictions and reopen Monday, as small business owners nationwide grow increasingly weary of lockdown.

Around 200 entrepreneurs have joined the so-called ‘Highlanders’ Veto’ movement, whose leader Sebastian Piton announced the disobedience campaign while clad in the traditional outfit of the Tatra mountains.

But the Polish government said opening businesses now would ‘radically increase’ the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country.

‘The entrepreneurs are this determined because they realise they won’t survive another month – so they have no choice,’ said Piton, who has described coronavirus as a ‘minor, pleasant illness’. 

Around 200 hundred entrepreneurs have joined the so-called ‘Highlanders’ Veto’ movement, whose leader Sebastian Piton announced the disobedience campaign while clad in the traditional outfit of the Tatra mountains. Pictured: Polish highlanders hold a press conference

Ski slopes, restaurants and hotels in Poland’s tourist-reliant mountainous south have announced they will defy anti-virus restrictions and reopen Monday

‘This is our last chance to veto this government policy, which is ruining us,’ he told the Polish news agency PAP. 

Piton added: ‘We will end this madness… which wants to destroy Poland and Polishness, destroy the middle class, small and medium-sized enterprises and kill several hundred people a day.’

On Monday, Poland’s government extended most of the anti-virus restrictions through the end of the month, requiring ski slopes, gyms and hotels to remain closed to the general public and restaurants to only do takeaway service.

The government also announced it would offer 1 billion zloty (£196 million) to struggling businesses in Poland’s mountain areas, but the highlanders responded that it was not enough, with Piton calling the help ‘scraps’. 

The highlanders are not the only ones losing patience with the government’s response to the pandemic, with many small business owners nationwide taking to social media to announce they are opening back up.

The Twitter account @OtwieraMY (‘WE are opening) has been posting the names and addresses of bars, restaurants, ice rinks and other places choosing to defy the Covid closures.

On Monday, Poland’s government extended most of the anti-virus restrictions through the end of the month, requiring ski slopes, gyms and hotels to remain closed to the general public and restaurants to only do takeaway service. Pictured: Tourists in the Tatra Mountains on 27 December 2020

‘I understand the emotions, the situation in this sector is difficult,’ Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller told public broadcaster Polskie Radio Program 1 on Tuesday.

‘But opening now… would radically increase the number of cases and, unfortunately, deaths.’

Members of Poland’s tourist and hotel industry have also filed a lawsuit over the restrictions, demanding compensation from the treasury.

The fitness sector is also planning to sue, and an association of retailers has threatened to do so as well.

Poland’s Finance Minister Tadeusz Koscinski said today he hopes some of the restrictions will be lifted in a few weeks.  

‘I hope that in two to three weeks the restrictions will be a little smaller, the vaccine will work,’ Koscinski told Money.pl.

‘Some restrictions will remain for quite a long time, but I think that 80 per cent of these restrictions will start to disappear at the turn of the first and second quarter,’ he said.

Daily Covid-19 case numbers have stabilised in Poland after surging to 25,611 in November last year. But the number of cases are still high – 9,319 positive test results were recorded yesterday. 

The discovery of new variants and rising case numbers in other European countries raise the risk of a possible third wave, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said on Monday.