EU turn ahead?

Over the last few years, there have been few issues in Polish politics that have engendered cross-party consensus, but one of them was European Union (EU) membership. Politicians from most of the mainstream political parties - certainly those represented in Parliament - were anxious to compete with each other in their eagerness to bring Poland into full membership by 2005. Unlike the Czech Republic and Hungary, where center-right leaders like Vaclav Klaus and Viktor Orban have made a virtue of their Euroscepticism, the previous Solidarity Election Action (AWS) government and Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek were distinct Europhiles. At the last election, the victorious Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) party ran on a ticket that was even more pro-European than the AWS administration, and Prime Minister Leszek Miller has made it clear that he sees EU accession as the key test whereby his coming governmental term will be judged. Yet on current evidence, that consensus is proving increasingly fragile, with implications that may yet upset the accession timetable.

The increasing fragmentation of the pro-EU consensus is occurring on three levels, and the first is within the government itself. Last week saw an unseemly row within the government coalition between the SLD and the smaller Polish Peasants Party (PSL) partner, when the latter objected to what they saw as uncoordinated negotiating concessions by the government toward the EU on land sales to foreigners. Under the new proposals that the Poles tabled in Brussels last week by Foreign Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and secretary of state for European affairs Danuta Hubner, EU nationals would be able to buy recreational land seven years after accession, and farmers could acquire land after a three-year lease. Additionally, immediately upon accession, EU nationals will be permitted to buy flats and houses in Poland with no restrictions.

That led to immediate revolt within the PSL ranks, coming as it did on the heels of what some PSL parliamentarians saw as the SLD reneging on an agreement to introduce an import tax, while at the same time applying 22% VAT on construction and housing. At an emergency party meeting outside Warsaw, PSL MPs complained that the SLD had tricked the PSL and that it was riding roughshod over rural interests. Part of the revolt is a function of the growing internal opposition to PSL leader Jarosław Kalinowski, also deputy prime minister and minister of agriculture, on the part of PSL activists who opposed the SLD coalition in the first place. But it is also a signal that as EU accession approaches, and the requirement for further concessions becomes evident, so the coalition will be sorely tested.

The second level of fragmentation is in Parliament. The last elections saw the entry into Parliament of at least two parties openly hostile to the EU - the radical populist Self-Defense (SO) party and the traditionalist League of Polish Families (LPR) movement - which together with the sceptical PSL and some anti-Western SLD parliamentarians mean that close to half the Parliament can be classed as Eurosceptic at best, and Eurohostile at worst. That was reflected in the demands by LPR politicians last week that Cimoszewicz resign as foreign minister for having failed to reveal the change in negotiating position to the parliamentary European Integration Committee beforehand. Similarly, deputy speaker and SO leader Andrzej Lepper openly threatened to organize a national campaign to ensure Cimoszewicz's removal, which led to the spectacle of President Aleksander Kwaśniewski having to enter the fray in defense of Cimoszewicz.

So much for the election of the SLD having improved Poland's pro-EU image. What is even more significant, however, is the third level of division - namely, between the political class as a whole and the Polish population. Recent opinion polls have shown a worrying downward trend in favor of EU membership. Significantly, support is also falling among social groups that until now were regarded as being solid EU supporters, such as entrepreneurs and white-collar workers. Many of these social groups now see the competitive pressures of the EU - especially in the context of a near-domestic recession - as being a challenge to their fragile and hard-won social status. That has turned them away from parties such as the Freedom Union (UW), which have traditionally identified their image with EU accession, and into the hands of parties such as SO. The latter is clearly more than a radical peasant movement, and is as much a vehicle for the frustrations and concerns of urban voters in the face of globalization and social dislocation.

Miller's original plan was to offer substantial concessions to Brussels in return for quicker membership and - he hoped - further electoral glory in 2005. Yet it is quickly becoming evident that against a backdrop of a fragile coalition, divided Parliament and increasingly anxious society, this strategy may have precisely the opposite effect. Instead of easing EU membership, Miller may be stoking up political and social frustrations that may yet derail the carefully planned timetable that he has laid out for himself, and which involves the need to win an EU referendum along the way. The experience of other EU aspirants such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, on the other hand, has been that political and social consensus on the road to the EU is best maintained by combining a declared desire for membership with a publicly visible defense of national interests. Although Miller has staked his reputation on rejecting the legacy of the right, he might reflect that on this issue at least, taking a leaf from the tactical book of his ideological opponents might paradoxically offer him the EU success that he so clearly craves.

Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed on director@cec.com.pl

Marek Matraszek