Mr Tusk's brainwave was to hand the issue not to a special ministry (easily nobbled by Poland's change-resistant civil servants) but to lawmakers.

ECONOMIST: Poland's politics

Any hardening of the heart that flows from these experiences may be entirely respectable, or it may amount to being nobbled by the security establishment, as some civil-liberties campaigners will have it.

ECONOMIST: An emerging divide in the coalition, and how it may be healed