Geremek searches for compromise on integration challenges
Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek begs to differ. It's not just that he's a medieval historian by training. It's that he is an astute modern-day politician who has seen schisms and doesn't believe they are all bad.
Take Poland's prospects for European Union (EU) entry. It used to be a wildly popular. Now, opinion polls show this has slipped to barely a majority. And many EU analysts worry that Poland doesn't take seriously enough the tough road ahead in harmonizing laws and practices.
In fact, there is a marked rise in overt Euro-critics, another strain in the coalition, and some participants at June's European Union Chambers of Commerce Forum voiced a commonly held fear: that EU entry critiques of Poland will coincide with the next elections for Parliament.
Not to worry, Geremek said during his speech to the forum, as long as EU entry does not become "a political football."
But won't the coalition schisms almost guarantee that the EU entry will be politicized, with some Christian National Unionists (ZChN) openly skittish about losing the country's "Polishness" with EU membership? Not necessarily. His own party, Freedom Union, might be called "Euro-realistic. Or others say we are Euro-enthusiastic. And AWS has some who are Euro-skeptics. I think that's a good sign, in which different views are represented and different opinions are held on EU integration."
This very difference, he said, may bring about the political debate on Poland and the European Union, which could spotlight not so much the benefits of EU membership but the country's challenge to modernize its economy in major ways, especially in rural Poland.
"I hope that will work," he said of the intra-coalition collisions on EU issues.
Geremek was speaking to the EU Forum representing Europe-wide business chambers. When the chamber's chief, Cristiano Pinzauti, noted that "the less-cultivated part of the Polish population is opposed to the EU because of the potential loss of 'Polishness,' " Geremek didn't tiptoe around the issue. Poland's identity is "rooted in the rural milieu" and 40% of Poles live in the countryside. But rather than writing off those people as anti-EU, he said. "We have to convince this rural milieu that the EU is a chance for them. We should convince them that modernization is not a threat to them," and that there must be changes to "structures rooted in the past."
• • •
Pinzauti said Geremek had been an eloquent guest on a celebrated TV interview show moderated by Bernard Piwot. He said Piwot is not easily swayed and yet he was moved to much emotion after Geremek talked of his life and times in Poland, from a onetime supporter of the Communist Party structures who quit in protest of the Soviet invasion of then-Czechoslovakia, to the Solidarity movement activist and strategist who was one of those rounded up and jailed after martial law was declared in 1981. To, now, one of the key people pushing Poland into NATO and helping prepare the way for EU entry.
• • •
New in town: Elizabeth Williamson, who succeeds Dan Michaels at the Wall Street Journal. She's a native of Chicago, took a journalism degree at Marquette but got detoured from reporting into public relations and advertising in her first jobs in Chicago.
After she and her contractor husband, Glenn Williamson (who works for developer Golub) moved to Bulgaria in 1994, however, she went back to journalism as a stringer for U.S. papers including the Chicago Tribune.
That expanded when the couple moved to St. Petersburg three years ago, and she began stringing for the Wall Street Journal and its monthly magazine.
Take Poland's prospects for European Union (EU) entry. It used to be a wildly popular. Now, opinion polls show this has slipped to barely a majority. And many EU analysts worry that Poland doesn't take seriously enough the tough road ahead in harmonizing laws and practices.
In fact, there is a marked rise in overt Euro-critics, another strain in the coalition, and some participants at June's European Union Chambers of Commerce Forum voiced a commonly held fear: that EU entry critiques of Poland will coincide with the next elections for Parliament.
Not to worry, Geremek said during his speech to the forum, as long as EU entry does not become "a political football."
But won't the coalition schisms almost guarantee that the EU entry will be politicized, with some Christian National Unionists (ZChN) openly skittish about losing the country's "Polishness" with EU membership? Not necessarily. His own party, Freedom Union, might be called "Euro-realistic. Or others say we are Euro-enthusiastic. And AWS has some who are Euro-skeptics. I think that's a good sign, in which different views are represented and different opinions are held on EU integration."
This very difference, he said, may bring about the political debate on Poland and the European Union, which could spotlight not so much the benefits of EU membership but the country's challenge to modernize its economy in major ways, especially in rural Poland.
"I hope that will work," he said of the intra-coalition collisions on EU issues.
Geremek was speaking to the EU Forum representing Europe-wide business chambers. When the chamber's chief, Cristiano Pinzauti, noted that "the less-cultivated part of the Polish population is opposed to the EU because of the potential loss of 'Polishness,' " Geremek didn't tiptoe around the issue. Poland's identity is "rooted in the rural milieu" and 40% of Poles live in the countryside. But rather than writing off those people as anti-EU, he said. "We have to convince this rural milieu that the EU is a chance for them. We should convince them that modernization is not a threat to them," and that there must be changes to "structures rooted in the past."
• • •
Pinzauti said Geremek had been an eloquent guest on a celebrated TV interview show moderated by Bernard Piwot. He said Piwot is not easily swayed and yet he was moved to much emotion after Geremek talked of his life and times in Poland, from a onetime supporter of the Communist Party structures who quit in protest of the Soviet invasion of then-Czechoslovakia, to the Solidarity movement activist and strategist who was one of those rounded up and jailed after martial law was declared in 1981. To, now, one of the key people pushing Poland into NATO and helping prepare the way for EU entry.
• • •
New in town: Elizabeth Williamson, who succeeds Dan Michaels at the Wall Street Journal. She's a native of Chicago, took a journalism degree at Marquette but got detoured from reporting into public relations and advertising in her first jobs in Chicago.
After she and her contractor husband, Glenn Williamson (who works for developer Golub) moved to Bulgaria in 1994, however, she went back to journalism as a stringer for U.S. papers including the Chicago Tribune.
That expanded when the couple moved to St. Petersburg three years ago, and she began stringing for the Wall Street Journal and its monthly magazine.
