Home / Press review / Archive / Magazine / Politics / Poland and the EU / Debate

Poland and the EU

The veto on the launch of talks on a new partnership agreement between the EU and Russia, the haggling which almost precipitated the collapse of an EU summit and the refusal to join the European Charter of Fundamental Rights – Poland's EU policy has found little sympathy among Europeans.

"How the Poles are getting on Europeans' Nerves" was the title story of the German news magazine Der Spiegel on 18 June 2007. And in the Austrian daily Die Presse on 15 November 2006 Wolfgang Böhm had already criticized the Polish government for "making all of Europe suffer the consequences of its unreasonable, querulous stance."

EU Commission President Manuel Barroso with Poland's Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński in Brussels, Photo: AP

Commenting on Poland's veto on talks between the EU and Russia for a new partnership agreement Böhm wrote: "Poland's nationalist government is demonstrating how to undermine common policies and systematically drive the EU to the brink of ungovernability."

The Polish government under Jarosław Kaczynski has made itself unpopular with its EU partners. Some have even publicly expressed their desire for the conservative ruling party to lose the parliamentary elections scheduled for 21 October 2007. The Polish daily Dziennik quoted Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema, for instance, as saying On 6 September 2007: "I hope the upcoming parliamentary elections will bring a pleasant surprise and result in the defeat of the backwards and nationalist right."

Allocation of Voting Rights in the EU

The main bone of contention between the EU and Poland over the past few years has been the voting mechanism for EU decisions. Back in 2003, Jan Rokita, the leading politician of the right-wing liberal opposition party Civic Platform (PO), cranked up the pressure on the left-wing government under Leszek Miller with the battle cry "Nice or death." At the time Poland was trying to prevent a reduction in the number of votes it had been allocated under the Treaty of Nice, which is still in force today. The Treaty of Nice, which was signed in the year 2000 by the 15 states that were EU members at the time, gives Poland and Spain 27 votes – only two fewer than Germany, France, Britain and Italy.

"The battle for one's own interests is an integral part of the community and guarantees its peaceful existence. The Germans and French are entitled to defend their own interests – Estonians and Poles, too," the Polish novelist Elzbieta Isakiewicz wrote on 13 September 2006 in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.

In the end the left-wing government renounced its bid to maintain the Nice system for distributing the votes and the new right-wing prime minister, Jarosław Kaczynski, followed suit. As an alternative he came up with the "square root or death" motto and lobbied for the so-called "Jagiellonian compromise" according to which the number of votes allocated to each country is determined by the square root of its total number of inhabitants.

In late June 2007, following lengthy discussions, the EU heads of state and government finally agreed on a compromise solution. They decided to postpone the switch from the Nice voting system to the new double majority model for a further two years. And instead of exercising his power of veto, as he had threatened do, Polish President Lech Kaczynski hailed the outcome of the summit as a great success.

Settling Old Scores

But the indignation the Kaczynski brothers' argumentation triggered among Europe's leading politicians remained strong, particularly when shortly before the EU summit Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczynski suddenly started talking about the six million Poles who died in the Second World War in a further attempt to have the voting system changed. "If Poland had not had to go through the ordeal of the years 1939 to1945, today it would have a total population of 66 million," the head of government asserted in an interview broadcast by Poland's public radio station on 19 June 2007. He argued that for this reason, the number of votes for Poland should not be considerably lower than that for big member states like Germany.

On 27 June 2007, the Viennese newspaper Die Presse countered with a question: "Is the EU the institutionalised quest to overcome the terrible history of the war – or has it been reduced to a marketplace for settling old scores?"

Even in Poland, many journalists perceive the Europolitics of the current government as grotesque. On 28 September 2007, Zdzisław Najder, former director of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe, noted in the Polish daily Dziennik that Europeans were "looking on in astonishment at the Polish government's employment of crass methods to pursue incomprehensible goals". Consequently, he added, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were treating Poland "like a sick man in a fever or a moody teenager."

Sympathy for Poland's Position

But in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published on 23 June 2007 EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso defended Poland. Saying it was "incorrect to portray Poland as anti-European" he pointed out that "in the discussions aimed at revising the draft constitution which was rejected in the referendums in France and the Netherlands, Poland made no demands for changes that would alter the fundamental character of the text."

Alan Posener also noted in the German daily Die Welt on 19 June 2007 that the predominantly negative picture Europeans have of Poland was entirely false. The attempt to "isolate one of the most important EU states to the applause of a generally anti-Polish European public is just part of a larger conspiracy: the draft constitution that was rejected by two important states by referendum is now to be pushed in through the back door in the form of a government treaty and thus become legally binding, despite the opposition." According to Posener, historians may one day write about "How the Poles Saved Europe."

The Debate over the Fundamental Rights Charter

In addition to the new voting procedure, the Polish government also opposes the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is to become legally binding in all member states under the EU reform treaty. Warsaw plans to follow in the UK's footsteps and opt out of the charter of civil rights, which would then not apply in Poland.

The Polish government's main argument against the charter is that it poses a threat to Poland's family law: the charter could facilitate the introduction of same-sex marriage for homosexuals in Poland. On 13 August 2007 in the Polish church weekly Gość Niedzielny Andrzej Grajewski also warned that the charter could use the postulates of the battle against minority discrimination and the protection of human dignity to encroach on national laws and pave the way for euthanasia in Poland. "Ultimately such changes become a fixed part of our identity. ... Today euthanasia is still a contentious issue, but the next generation may regard the refusal to grant people the right to kill the old, the suffering and the depressed as a barbaric anachronism."

Withdrawal from the EU?

Many of the arguments put forward in the Polish debate have met with incomprehension from other Europeans. "Only the Poles themselves can damage Poland's reputation and influence, and it has to be said that in recent times they've done an excellent job of this," Dominique Moïsi, a political expert and professor at the College of Europe in Natolin (near Warsaw) pointed out on 25 July 2007.

And on 22 June 2007 Bojana Rozic went as far as to speculate on the possibility of Poland's expulsion from the EU in the Slovenian daily Dnevnik: She contended that eurosceptics like Poland should simply be told "Well there's the door."

Writing in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 19 June 2007, Ulrich Schmid conceded that the Kaczynski brothers – like the English – were very sceptical about further integration and the reinforcement of federal elements, yet nonetheless stressed: "... The Kaczynskis don't reject the EU, and neither do the Polish people, the majority of whom are very enthusiastic about the Union."

The Pro-European Attitude of the Polish People

Opinion polls show that the Polish people have a much more positive attitude towards the EU than their government. For them it's mainly the tangible benefits that count: free movement of workers, EU subsidies, and not least the fact that EU membership guarantees democratic rights. A Eurobarometer poll conducted last spring revealed that 67 percent of Poles consider EU membership to be a "good thing." That's more than in most other member states – the EU average is 57 percent approval.

As the Polish journalist Jacek Kucharczyk concluded on 2 May 2007 in the Gazeta Wyborcza "... There is still a large gap between the pro-European society and those in power who promise to defend us against Europe."

Oliver Hinz

Oliver Hinz is Poland correspondent for euro|topics. He works for the Katholische Nachrichtenagentur (KNA), the Netzwerk für Osteuropa-Berichterstattung (n-ost), the Welt am Sonntag and other ...
» to author index

Further articles on the subject » International Relations, » Domestic Policy, » EU Constitution, » EU Policy, » Poland, » Europe
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Domestic Policy, » EU Constitution, » EU Policy, » Poland, » Europe