PROTESTS opposing a clampdown on the media entered their third day in Poland yesterday as President Andrzej Duda met opposition leaders for talks.

A group of around two dozen MPs continued a sit-in demonstration in the parliament building, while opponents and supporters of the ruling Law and Justice Party rallied in the streets of Warsaw.

The latest protests have erupted in response to new restrictions on media coverage of politics — a proposed limit on the number of journalists permitted to enter the parliament and on which television stations are allowed to broadcast proceedings.

But they follow on from protests last week over a clampdown on public gatherings.

Initial plans to give government and Catholic Church-organised demonstrations automatic priority over all others have been dropped following complaints from the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

However key parts of the legislation remain which allows organisations to reserve areas for their own demonstrations for up to three years and prohibiting counter-demonstrators from coming near.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has said that the law would introduce “order” and counteract the “fashion for demonstrating lately.”

Mass protests forced the government to back down on plans to ban abortion earlier this year.

But former Polish PM Donald Tusk, now president of the European Council (an EU body not to be confused with the Council of Europe, which is separate from the EU), infuriated Polish authorities on Saturday by saying the country risked turning into a “dictatorship” and comparing the protests to those against the socialist government of the 1980s.

Protesters themselves have been keen to draw the link, chanting “Solidarity” after the name of the anti-communist movement — and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa appears to agree, calling Beata Szydlo’s administration “the worst government Poland has ever had … even communists were better.”

But its supporters compare the liberal and pro-EU opposition to the communists, dismissing a “red rabble.”

Prime Minister Ms Szydlo accuses the opposition of seeking to overthrow the government because they are unlikely to win elections.