Around half of Poland’s gyms have reportedly reopened this week in defiance of the government’s coronavirus restrictions and thousands of restaurants are expected to follow suit, as growing numbers of businesses rebel against the country’s lockdown, which some claim is illegal.
Industry groups for the fitness, tourism, hotel and restaurant sectors – all of which have been ordered to stay closed under current rules – have issued a letter, exclusively seen by Notes from Poland, to President Andrzej Duda calling for a meeting.
On Monday Poland allowed museums, art galleries and stores in shopping centres to reopen with strict sanitary measures in place. However, hotels, restaurants, bars and most sporting facilities were ordered to remain closed until at least mid-February.
But last month, the Polish Fitness Federation (PFF) had warned that many of its members would reopen at the start of February, regardless of the rules the government put in place. And this week the PFF has reported that almost 1,600 facilities – around half of Poland’s fitness clubs – reopened yesterday.
“The reopening has been very positive,” the federation’s head, Tomasz Napiórkowski, told Notes from Poland, saying that it is “only natural” that more will now reopen.
He says that there were “dozens” of checks by police and sanitary authorities on Monday, but that none yielded fines. The PFF has offered free legal counsel to its members, but is not circulating a list of clubs that are open so as to “not make work easier” for authorities, said Napiórkowski.
Yet industry groups are also pushing for a change in rules that would allow the remaining businesses, which have been less willing to flout restrictions, to reopen safely and legally.
In a letter seen by Notes from Poland, the PFF have been joined by several other bodies – the Economic Chamber of the Polish Hotel Industry (IGHP), the country’s largest hotel federation, which also represents restaurants; the Incentive Travel Organisers Association (SOIT); and the Industry Council for Meetings and Events (RPSiWS) – in asking Duda for a meeting.
The heads of the four groups asked the president for “help in developing mechanisms that protect business owners” from their industries. “We want to return to activity…instead of demanding compensation,” they wrote.
“So far, we have not received any reliable data justifying the decision to close fitness clubs and gyms or hotels operating under a sanitary regime,” said the industry groups.
According to Napiórkowski, the letter – dated 27 January – has been received by the president’s office and a decision is being made. “Today the climate for talks is different than just a few weeks ago because the government has had the opportunity to see the direction in which this is heading,” he told Notes from Poland.
A number of other locked-down businesses have taken a stance of open defiance, under the slogan #otwieraMY (#WeAreOpening). Activists have published an interactive map detailing venues that are reopening.
According to the Polish Gastronomy Chamber of Commerce, as many as 20,000 restaurants are expected to admit customers in violation of the current rules.
In January several nightclubs also hosted parties, some recasting their core business as sporting events or political party conferences, which are exempt from closing down.
Karol Opoka, who runs the Swojskie Jadło restaurant in Kolonia Sobieszczany, a village near Lublin in eastern Poland, says he has been open all along. “Clients come from very far because little else is open in the Lubelskie province,” he tells us.
In recent weeks he has experienced two police checks, neither of which resulted in a fine. “The longer one took six hours; they checked everything: every bottle, looking for something that looked off,” says Opoka.
Many business owners, including Opoka, cite growing legal doubts around the government’s method of introducing restrictions, which many legal experts have argued are unconstitutional without declaring a state of emergency. A number of court rulings have recently challenged the legality of the restrictions.
Some businesses have exploited the fact that Poland reopened cultural venues this week. PiwPaw, a pub in central Warsaw with walls tiled with beer caps, has reopened as the “Warsaw Beer Cap Museum”.
Bars in Poland are meant to be closed under Covid restrictions, but this was how one in the centre of Warsaw looked on Saturday night.
Its owners have joined the growing number of businesses in Poland choosing to ignore lockdown rules and reopen pic.twitter.com/o8Kqf2n5mX
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 25, 2021
Many businesses, however, are sticking to government rules. Fit by Step, a family-run fitness club in central Kraków, has remained shut for more than six months over the course of the pandemic.
“Even if we reopen right now, customers won’t return; it would be a fake opening,” says the owner, Ewa Lisowska, who notes that only 30% of clients came back when the club was able to open in June following the first lockdown.
Since last spring, the gym has purchased cameras and computers and launched online classes to keep in touch with regular customers of the 13-year-old business.
“Customers can see and talk with their favourite instructors during training…they’re getting used to the online format, they are no longer wary of keeping their webcams on,” Lisowska tells us.
She also noted that reopening would mean rent returning to normal rates as negotiations with landlords would be harder. Lisowska worries that so long as she “vouches with her own wealth” and has received state aid, she is unwilling to take any legal and financial risks.
“I unequivocally support those gyms which are able to reopen,” she said, but added that she would herself not engage in the “legal fiction” of exploiting loopholes by, for example, signing club members up to sporting societies to allow them to train for “competitions”.
“I would not be comfortable with that, and would not want to expose customers to stress or nuisance,” she said.
Main image credit: Piotr Skornicki / Agencja Gazeta
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
