Anti-EU voices talking louder but not agreeing

The government's nationwide European Integration Information campaign kicked off this month aiming to win the hearts and minds of Polish voters and gain support for a pending referendum on European Union accession. But Euro-skeptics are making it clear they haven't spoken their last word yet. "At the beginning, it was us who used emotional, ideological arguments in disputes with Euro-enthusiasts and they would present purely economic pros but today our roles switched," said Tomasz Sommer, editor-in-chief of Najwyższy Czas! The weekly publication represents views of the Real Politics Union (UPR), a conservative-liberal political grouping not represented in the Sejm. While public opinion polls show majority support for joining the EU, rhetoric from both sides of the argument is certain to heat up as the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD)-led government looks to close sensitive negotiations with Brussels and prepares to call a referendum on joining the political and economic bloc. Groups across the political spectrum are honing their arguments in hope of winning the vote, scheduled for the second half of 2003. UPR organized May 11's second annual Polish Euro-skeptic Conference, aimed at presenting rational arguments against EU accession. "Recently there has been a lot of information on the financial and economic consequences of EU integration that proved to be inconvenient for EU supporters and they simply stopped using them," Sommer said. "Now, it's us who, in polemics, are focused on economy." Chief among Euro-skeptic arguments against EU integration are bureaucratic micromanagement and over-regulation that results in production quotas and subsidies instead of free market structures. "The problem is that the Euro-skeptic movement in Poland is not coherent," Sommer said.

Across the spectrum Sommer described three groups of EU-integration opponents - or at least its careful critics - who are currently represented in the Sejm but are so different that it would be impossible to create one powerful movement. One of the most vocal group is the League of Polish Families (LPR). Piotr Krutul, owner of a 25-hectare farm in Eastern Poland's Podlasie and an LPR legislator, focused on figures and prices when reasoning against EU integration. "The EU has a huge problem with its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)," he said. "It's a dead-end street so why should it help us out? They proposed (to give) us 25% of direct subsidies they offer to their farmers. It's an obvious discrimination by an organization that allegedly is based on the concept of non-discrimination. Meanwhile in two years the best farms in Poland will go bankrupt because prices of EU food products are already lower due to subsidies they get." Sommer said that all political movements addressed to farmers share similar criticisms of EU integration. "Take the Andrzej Lepper-led Self-Defense (SO) and the Peasants Party (PSL), SLD's partner in the ruling coalition, which as far as I know is getting more and more radical on EU integration every day," Sommer said. "But paradoxically, what they want - full direct subsidies and guarantees of profits for farmers - is exactly what the EU offers to its current members." There are also critics of EU integration within the Law and Justice (PiS) political movement, according to Sommer.

The media factor While Euro-skeptic's voices are not ignored in local media, they are portrayed as extremists and eccentrics as opposed to a force with positive economic ideas, Sommer said. Ryszard Strauss, head of the office coordinating the government's EU information campaign, said he had never heard about ridiculing or ignoring Euro-skeptics in the media. "I would say there are even too many opponents of EU integration in the media," he said. According to Marta Fogler, a PO deputy and member of the Sejm's European Committee, Euro-skeptics can't be perceived as one movement and assessed as such. "And one shouldn't ignore them but the problem is they are not open to rational arguments," she said. Activists from both sides of the debate promised a lot yet to come before the 2003 referendum. "It's not that we don't know what will be the benefits of joining the EU," Strauss said. "It's part of our tactics that we'll start talking about it once the negotiations are over." And then the rhetoric promises to reach new levels. "Most people will make their decision in the very last months before the referendum," said Najwyższy Czas!'s Sommer. "So, we'll continue polemics and we'll organize the Euro-skeptic conference next year. But I think that the pro-EU establishment will win the referendum anyway unless the economic situation in Poland gets so bad that people will vote against the EU integration in a protest against the Miller's government."