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Both parties won an absolute majority of seat in the parliament of their respective countries, and that without winning an absolute majority of the votes, because of how the election system works.

Both parties are also defend conservatives views, which people might or might not like. However, the UK's conservatives, while they are opposed by many they aren't considered dangerous, while the PiS is considered very dangerous for democracy. Why is there a difference?

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Bregalad
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The reason PiS is considered dangerous is not because they have the absolute majority, it's what they are doing with it. In just the first three month of the legislative period, they:

  • Changed the rules of procedure of the constitutional court to make it harder for them to rule laws as unconstitutional.
  • Increased the control of the parliament over the public media by giving the parliament the right to fire and hire the directors of public media outlets at any time.
  • Allowed law enforcement to conduct surveillance on journalists, doctors and lawyers.

I don't want to claim that the motivation behind these measures is to build a totalitarian police-state but they are very obvious steps in that direction.

I don't want to claim either that the United Kingdom is much better in any of these regards. After all, the supreme court of the UK is quite weak due to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, their super-injunctions are a powerful and often abused media control tool and their surveillance infrastructure is second only to that of the US. But in the UK this was a slow process.

Poland currently does too much at once which worries the other EU states.

Philipp
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    Followup: I can see how it can worry citizens of Poland. Why would it worry other EU states? – user4012 Jan 18 '16 at 16:30
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    @user4012 That's indeed an interesting question to which I think I could write a good answer. Feel free to ask. – Philipp Jan 18 '16 at 17:15
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    done - http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/9745/why-do-the-other-eu-countries – user4012 Jan 18 '16 at 17:18
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    @Philipp Media control in many EU states is dubious at least. I belive Berlusconi constrolled almost all Italian media at some point and that didn't prevent him to be hated among all Italy. Swiss has the higher density of newspapers, however all of them were bought by the same company: Tamedia, Inc. so this company has a large control of media in Switzerland. Is the situation in Poland even more worrying than that? – Bregalad Jan 18 '16 at 21:39
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    @Bregalad I think the fact that Berlusconi got voted prime minister of Italy four times despite being so obviously corrupt is a good example why having all media controlled by the government is a bad idea. Also, I would like to repeat the last sentence of my answer: It's not that Poland is so much worse than some other EU members, its the rapid development to the worse. – Philipp Jan 18 '16 at 22:02
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    The previous government destroyed the leading, and basically the only opposition newspaper, with the most of the staff quitting and starting new magazines: Krzysztof Feusette, Cezary Gmyz, Piotr Gociek, Piotr Gontarczyk, Andrzej Horubała, Jerzy Jachowicz, Igor Janke, Jacek Karnowski, Michał Karnowski, Waldemar Łysiak, Marek Magierowski, Robert Mazurek, Maciej Pawlicki, Marek Pyza, Piotr Semka, Wiktor Świetlik, Łukasz Warzecha, Bronisław Wildstein, Piotr Zaremba, Rafał Zawistowski, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, Piotr Zychowicz. Shortly after the sells dipped from 126,113 to 14,161 and was evently closed. –  Jun 23 '17 at 08:40
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    ...and no one in the west cared. Why? because the government was left leaning and the newspaper was conservative. The constitutional court ruled that the judges that were giving death penalty to opposition members were immune. And no one cared, because the judges were left winged and people killed were conservative. One exmple: criminal and murdered that happily lives in sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Michnik. –  Jun 23 '17 at 08:41
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    Stefan Michnik was giving the death penalty to people in 1951, and Sweden declined to extradite him since his alleged crimes were outside the statue of limitations in Sweden. It has nothing to do with him being left-wing, or the people killed being conservative (if they even were; anti-communist and left-wing are not inconsistent, and anti-Soviet even less so). If you're talking about Rzeczpospolita as the opposition newspaper, it's still in print, and the German Wikipedia article blames PiS for the removal of the head editor. – prosfilaes Sep 07 '22 at 19:42