With the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic, Poland passed to the next stage of the global sanitary crisis. In the era of pandemics, after the presidential elections, numerous political crises, a na-tional lockdown, demonstrations against restrictions in access to abortion, and the start of vac-cinations against COVID-19, the issue of trust between the institutions of the state – including the European Union – and the society, became an important element of the construction of the post-COVID reality. Is a crisis of confidence a sign of weakness of democratic values in both state and European institutions? Will the institutional inability of the state to govern lead Poland to a crisis of trust? Does the Polish media discourse reflect this crisis of trust? The leading research method used while preparing this text was discourse analysis. In the conclusion the authors diagnose the current situation: polarization of the Polish media, fueled with many years of political, social and moral conflicts, further increased by the COVID-19, and point to the need to build a strong and uncompromising trust between the Polish society and its political leaders.

Nowadays Poland faces a problem of the shortage of domestic labour resources because of the population ageing and emigration of the Poles. It is essential to create a flexible flow of international labour to fulfil the needs of the economy. The principal aim of the paper is the identification of the specificity of labour immigrants from Eastern European countries. The paper is based on the hypothesis that belonging to the culturally and historically similar groups influences the similarity of the pattern of the migration behaviour. The undertaken research method was a critical analysis of literature and desk research of secondary sources. The primary research has covered the selected logistics companies from Bialystok. It was discovered that Ukraine and Belarus are the major suppliers of the international labour in Poland. Though those groups are quite similar, they differ in the selection of occupation and voivodships. To keep the most demanded groups of immigrants in Poland, it is crucial to create financial and non-economic conditions that are better than in their domestic countries and can be comparable to the countries with a higher standard of living, than in Poland. For the employers, the simplification and acceleration of procedures of hiring international employees are needed.

Ukraine’s  history  has  been  a  turbulent  one,  and  currently  the  country  is  in  a  crisis.  The  purpose  of  the  article  is  to  discuss  how  Ukraine  can  move  away  from  the  current  East-West  competition  that  poses  a  risk  of  dividing  the  country  into  two.  What  does  it  take  to  move  a  united  Ukraine  forward?  How  can  Ukraine  progress  economically,  politically  and  improve  its  security  profile?  The  methodology  used  in  the  article  is  the  case  study  method  and  it  often  compares  Ukraine’s  performance  with  Poland,  a  country  of  a  similar  size  in  terms  of  population,  land  mass,  and  located in geographic proximity. The article argues that more inclusive and sustainable growth in Ukraine will require increased productivity of the economy, more benefits from international trade and investment supported by closer integration into the global economy, as well as a well-governed domestic economy with stronger institutions to withstand pressures from vested interests. The US, EU  and  NATO  must  make  more  efforts  to  help  Ukraine  resolve  the  current  conflict  with  Russia,  which in turn needs to stop the military engagement in Ukraine to let it recover and benefit from integration and cooperation with the West. NATO membership and full EU membership should not be considered for now, but Ukraine should be an independent and neutral buffer state between the East and the West, with full access to the EU common market. Ukraine needs increased financial support, especially from the EU, US, IMF and the World Bank for its reconstruction.

In  recent  years  the  seemingly  firm  historical  ties  between  Warsaw  and  Berlin  have  become  increasingly strained. This results from a growing political asymmetry between the two countries. Germany moved into a semi-hegemonial position under the conditions of the triple crisis of banking, economy  and  sovereign  debt  in  the  eurozone.  Consequently,  German  chancellor  Angela  Merkel  was  in  a  strong  enough  position  to  implement  ordoliberal  reforms  of  the  eurozone’s  governance  architecture,  which  were  promoted  as  an  approach  without  alternatives.  Merkel  maintained  her  uncompromising  stance  during  the  migration  crisis  in  the  summer  of  2015,  when  she  demanded  implementation of compulsory migrant distribution quotas across the EU. Poland and the Visegrád countries had initially strongly supported German leadership in resolving the eurozone crisis. The alienation  from  Germany’s  European  agenda  however  became  significant  under  the  conditions  of  the  migration  crisis.  Here  the  firm  opposition  of  Poland  and  the  rest  of  the  Visegrád  Group  towards Germany’s preferences shows a strategic mismatch between the EU’s liberal core, which is spearheaded by Germany, and the concept of the “illiberal” state, which Poland has embraced under the  PiS  government.  The  willingness  to  resolve  these  differences  will  be  crucial  in  determining  the  future shape of Polish-German relations.