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After the global crisis the Core-Periphery Divide has deepened in the EU between the most developed Core countries and the East-Central European (ECE) countries that has been most manifest in the violations of rule of law (RL) by Poland and Hungary. This process of confrontation with the EU rules and values has been termed in the paper as De-Europeanization that has been analysed in its historical trajectory from the "Copenhagen Dilemma" to the "Juncker Paradox", as both of them have encouraged the ECE autocratic regimes by their neglectence. Namely, the paper argues first that the Copenhagen criteria have not been well prepared for regulating the accession of the New Member States (NMS), since the EU has not elaborated a proper facilitating mechanism for the sustainable Europeanization of NMS. Therefore, the Copenhagen Dilemma has emerged in the EU, which means that after the accession the EU has not had the legal tools to correct the divergence from democracy in NMS. The legal toolkits - the infringement process and the Article 7 procedure - have not been effective to enforce RL in ECE, as the increasing conflicts with Poland and Hungary have demonstrated. Moreover, for second, due to the "polycrisis", the Juncker Commission has focused on the priorities of the Core and it has neglected these violations of EU rules and values. This neglectence and inaction has been counterproductive because it has increased the RL conflicts and has given manoeuvring room for the hard populist ECE regimes that has been described in this paper as the Juncker Paradox. The main reason for the ECE divergence from the EU mainstream has been their failure in the catching up process to produce competitive economy and sustainable democracy. In order to achieve this stage both the EU needs to reconstruct is legal toolkits as part of its new integration strategy and the ECE states have to overcome their current socio-political crisis that has produced these hard populist regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the work is to present the concept of the mobile application strategy choice in the process of architectural design. Design/methodology/approach: The best solution to the problem would be to develop and design application and implement on mobile platform. Findings: This system is the most popular system for mobile devices in Poland. Research limitations/implications: The work focuses on presenting the concept of an application that facilitates establishing contacts between representatives of architecture industries. Practical implications: This is an important issue for future users as it allows for product improvement. Originality/value: The application can be a preliminary step to developing a conflict management strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on two case studies from Polish localities, makes a case for a scalar interpretation of conflicts related to environmental protection and economic development. Poland, one of the poorest and least environmentally friendly member countries of the European Union, has to reconcile conflicting objectives and contradictory interests that-due to the imperatives of both fast economic growth and ecological sustainability-manifest themselves at different scales. Thus, drawing on dynamic and interactive conceptualizations of scale, the study argues that the two cases can be seen as an illustration of interscalar conflicts. In doing so, the paper demonstrates why a scalar interpretation is preferable to other explanations. It also sheds light on the question of the privileged status of the local scale, suggesting that it is problematic to uncritically regard any scale as superior to other scales. By exploring sociospatial processes in the east European context, the study aims to expand the existing body of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses successful seller-buyer conflict solving, including the measurement issues. Its purpose was to explore the antecedents of effective conflict management on the insurance market in Poland. It allowed for the enrichment of the multidimensional measuring model of perceived justice of complaints handling as well as for the adaptation of the model to the insurance industry in Poland. There were some new antecedents of effective conflict management found, which should be included in measures of justice, e.g.: providing the client with the possibility of choosing compensation, a single-person complaint handling, the competence of the personnel. The good management practices include, among others, the isolation of special units in the company's structure dealing with complaints handling along with the empowerment of the employees, which would effect in the positive outcomes of the complaint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health Care Chaplains, whose primary role is to provide spiritual care to patients, their families, and medical staff, are sometimes asked for help in making difficult decisions and resolving conflicts. Their help is justified especially when religious beliefs and values constitute the root of the problem. The study aims to analyze the phenomenon of asking hospital and hospice chaplains in Poland to take on the role of mediators in conflicts concerning methods of patients' medical care. A survey was conducted among 108 Catholic chaplains, i.e. at least 10% of all chaplains currently working in Polish hospitals and hospices. The survey was conducted using the electronic questionnaire through an intermediary with no follow-up and so self-selecting. The findings obtained were subjected to statistical analysis. Of all the respondents, 31% admitted having received requests to mediate in a conflict over patient care. Such requests were not conditional upon the type of medical facility, its location, or the chaplain's years of experience. 30% of chaplains receive requests to mediate between patients and doctors. Solving disputes between family members and members of the medical teams are less frequent (25 and 19%, respectively). The majority of the respondents (73%) accept the role of the mediator, although 46% reserve the right to refuse in certain situations. Asking health care chaplains to become mediators in conflicts over patients' medical care confirms the need to include mediation skills in the course of their education and gaining professional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarship on heritage has been preoccupied with discussions of conflict and discord. But might heritage not also be deployed for conciliatory functions after national trauma? Kazimierz, the historical Jewish district of Cracow, Poland is a unique urban space whose recent Jewish-themed development both reflects and extends grassroots Polish-Jewish relationship building in the post-Holocaust, post-Communist era. It is one of the few sites in the world today where (non-Polish) Jews and (non-Jewish) Poles regularly encounter one another. Based on the everyday interactions and understandings of local participants, rather than top-down memorial schemes or official proclamations of the achievement or expectation of reconciliation, this paper considers heritage spaces and landscapes as key sites for conciliatory civil society development through meaningful engagement with difficult histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Russia's aggression against Ukraine has led to an increased interest in knowledge about warfare. The public debate about this war has become a test for the expertise skills of numerous scholars and government analysts. Within a few months, a new epistemic community emerged, which began to create a security discourse around the problems of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The article tries to explain the key terms used in this discourse and to indicate what classical texts in the field of international relations say about the causes and course of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In order to compare theory with practice, the author analysed several hundred expert publications on the war and conducted a total of several dozen interviews and surveys in 2022 in the Polish expert community. This text is therefore based on both a theoretical analysis and an insight into the reasoning of the epistemic community of experts educated in the field of security studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we are interested in the use of 'untold stories': parts of narratives which are implied rather than explicitly told by speakers. More specifically, we demonstrate how Polish informants from the towns of Gubin and Zgorzelec on the Polish--German border use untold stories as a means of situating themselves or other Poles in a position of advantage in conflictual situations between Poles and Germans. We demonstrate that our informants end the explicit parts of their narratives with markedly ambiguous utterances in order to imply a further part of the story with two interrelated goals: constructing the speakers (or other Poles) as direct 'winners' of the conflictual situation and positioning them as having the high moral ground in it. This, furthermore, had the global aim of positive self-presentation of their ethnic group (Poles) and negative presentation of the other ethnic group (Germans). Finally, we argue that the use of the untold stories is related to the particular social and political setting in which they occur, one in which our informants consistently positioned themselves as a 'losing', or 'non-elite' group being under political and economic 'attack' from their German neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding factors and mechanisms causing large carnivore aggression towards people is crucial for their conservation in modern human-dominated landscapes. We present detailed descriptions of wolf attacks on people in early summer 2018 in two areas of Poland, analysis of behaviour, fitness and origin of individuals responsible for the attacks and management actions undertaken by local communities as well as governmental bodies and non-governmental organisations. We show that attacks were caused by yearling wolves (13-month-old male and 14-month-old female) originating from local packs, which appeared near households several months prior to incidents. Both individuals were positively food-conditioned and showed increasing habituation caused by irresponsible behaviour of people such as long-lasting intentional feeding or illegal keeping. Post mortem necropsy revealed obesity and serious abnormality of spleen (polysplenia) in the problem female wolf that negatively impacted her fitness and was the most likely reason for her presence near households and feeding on leftovers. Despite prolonged observations of these wolves very close to human settlements (less than 30 m), no mitigation actions were undertaken until the attacks, after which both individuals were killed. We provide several recommendations to avoid aggressive human-carnivore encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the main rationale of Polish cultural diplomacy as it was developed by governmental and non-governmental actors at a time of international conflict. Focusing on the years following Poland's EU accession (2004) and particularly the Polish Year in Russia planned for 2015 and cancelled in 2014, this study contextualises these developments in the post-state-socialist transition to democracy. In this period a convergence between Polish cultural and public diplomacy took place. The main argument is that the internal developments in state cultural policy can be understood as constitutive of the foreign policy strategy of cultural diplomacy, as its domestic determinant. However, as the case of Poland shows, the logic of foreign policy continues to dominate cultural diplomacy. At the time of international conflict state cultural policy struggles to project its voice abroad through cultural diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a legacy of transnational activism in Polish-West German relations during the 1950s and 1960s, connected to the borderlands/expellee background of several of the early activists who initiated the relations. At a time when the Polish and West German states maintained no official diplomatic relations with each other, the importance of non-state initiatives and dialogue breaking with the antagonistic nationalism of the two world wars grew disproportionately. These individuals' expellee background, bilingualism, cross-border networks and loosened national identities contributed to their effectiveness in Polish-German relations. Taking exception to the popular conceptions of expellees as necessarily identical with the negative or anti-Polish opinions commonly associated with the expellee organizations, the article also focuses specifically on how certain expellees and former borderlands inhabitants attempted to renegotiate their postwar roles, political stances and even identities by associating themselves with Polish-German relations. They challenged the dualistic and polarizing nature of media discussions about German expellees in politics. In addition, the article and these individuals pose a challenge to international relations/conflict resolution research to look to cross-border communities as key elements in postwar/post-genocide dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]