Dangerous liaisons
Jarosław Kaczyński, brother of Lech and de facto leader of the Law and Justice Party, has just gone on record saying that the deal on offer is unacceptable and calls into question Poland's readiness for accession in 2004. Kaczyński is trying to play to the nationalist gallery and to make political capital out of the uncomfortable position the government finds itself in. In doing so, he has clearly decided not to worry too much about his local election coalition partner, the pro-European Civic Platform (PO). He knows that cuddling up to the ultra-Catholics could shatter his brittle arrangement with the liberals. However, like the EU, he is not in a negotiating mood.
Both the government and its opponents are playing a risky game: the government by pretending that the accession talks are real negotiations; the opposition by pretending that there is an alternative to joining on more or less the terms offered.
As far as I can recall from my days at school, the word negotiations implies talks between two or more parties at which a compromise is worked out. For a compromise to be reached, both partners must have something they can give or withhold from the other.
Whatever chance Poland ever had of having relations based on partnership in its accession talks evaporated years ago when the nation and other applicant countries fell over each other in the rush to sign the Europe Agreements. These accords committed the accession countries to an opening of their markets. In return, the EU also committed itself to granting access to its markets and to providing candidate countries with resources through ventures such as the EU Phare Programme.
This was a damn good deal for Brussels and the EU member states but a dud one for the Poles. Opening up a market of 40 million people in return for promises of membership without a timetable and an aid programme which was already in place (EU Phare) does not seem like very good business or good politics. From then on, it was clear that there would to be no negotiations as the EU had got what it wanted before it even started. The EU was acting more in a Versailles Treaty rather than a Marshall Plan mode.
What has been going on since the signing of the Europe Agreement is just a process of slowly checking how much of the acquis communautaire (the standing body of EU laws) Poland has implemented and delaying the accession timetable in order to make sure that existing member states do not lose out financially on enlargement. Add to this the fact that so much of the EU assistance has been consumed by western companies and that the balance of trade with EU countries has been in deficit, and you soon conclude that the whole enlargement process is taking place at the expense of the applicant countries.
Instead of negotiations we now have pleading by the applicant countries worried about the domestic political fallout of getting a bad deal. The current scenario is rather reminiscent of that famous scene from "Oliver Twist" when little Oliver asks for more gruel. The EU workhouse may scrape a little more out of the barrel to wipe away the tears come the Copenhagen summit, but it will only be the money it decided to withdraw at the Brussels summit. No new money will be found. No significant concessions will be made.
The price of accession on the EU's terms will be great and cannot now realistically be avoided. What we are witnessing in EU-Poland relations is the classic case of a new club member having to suffer pain in order to be accepted into the fold.
In a way, I am not surprised that the "Yes" camp has been forced to rely for support on the church. Faith-based arguments may be badly needed when the final package is confirmed in Copenhagen. For the biggest (by far) accession country to get a deal which is not better than minnows, such as Latvia or Slovenia, is a real humiliation which will not be easy to live down.
That final package will not create a level playing field for the country's farmers. They will have to compete on the single market with far more heavily subsidised producers in the west. As a result of the German-French deal (now those were real negotiations!), the budget until 2013 is virtually set. This means that the real degree of influence the accession countries are to have in the first decade of membership will be very limited.
No doubt the end of the current EU-Poland talks will be presented as a great achievement. For this government, getting the agreed deal recognised as a success is crucial to its chances of re-election. The opposition will be divided between those who will argue that these terms are unacceptable (the ultra-Catholics, Lepper and possibly the Kaczyński brothers) and those who will accept the deal while criticising the government for having made mistakes during the negotiations (Civic Platform). Expect a tight referendum and a return to rancour on the Polish centre-right.
