Seen but not heard
Look, you mustn't take these things too personally.
I know it looks bad when a senior European leader, indeed a president of all things, tells you to shut up and stop poking your nose in where it isn't wanted, but hey, that's European Union diplomacy for you.
If it's any consolation, it wasn't just Poland that Jacques Chirac was getting at last week: he levelled accusations of bad behaviour and childishness at all of the EU candidate countries which signed letters more or less siding with America in the Iraq crisis.
Besides, it had been a long day. What happened was this: it was last Monday night at an emergency summit that few EU leaders wanted to have for fear that it would expose their deep differences over Iraq. It was a meeting of the 15 leaders and not the 25, largely because the French didn't want any lectures on war from young upstarts who aren't even in the club yet.
Predictably, agreement was reached around a lowest-common-denominator statement warning Saddam Hussein that time was running out. It was at about this point that someone, unwisely, decided to observe that there was now growing support for the American stance in what we know as the "new Europe."
Then Chirac let rip. His point was that new members of the EU club should be seen and not heard, particularly if they haven't yet got their membership cards. And yes, there were suggestions within the French camp that Romania and Bulgaria in particular should watch it, otherwise someone just might put a French-speaking spanner in the works of their less-than-mature EU membership applications.
You will have read by now of the universal shock, horror and outrage at such remarks, not just in many central and east European countries, but within the existing EU, too.
My favourite response is from the soft-spoken leader of the British Labour Euro-MPs, Gary Titley, who said: "It's bloody outrageous. In fact, it's bloody disgraceful!" One reporter, knowing him to be a mild-mannered individual asked: "Do you really mean to say 'bloody?'"
Titley replied: "Yes, I bloody do!"
So, no points for the French president in the midst of one of the most difficult political and diplomatic phases the EU has been through in a long while.
The day after the outburst, Prime Minister Leszek Miller failed to turn up at a mini-summit for candidate EU leaders to be briefed on what had happened. Then someone pointed out that he was on a trip to India and had sent a sick note, and several other dignitaries did the same. They were, said many, miffed at being treated as second-class EU leaders, but Chirac's point is that you can't start expressing clear points of view about the club until your membership starts running, and that is not until next May. Meanwhile, just stand over there and behave yourself, or else.
Is there long-term fallout from this outburst beyond the Iraq crisis? Probably, but it is a far more complex jigsaw than the cackhanded American characterisation of "old Europe-new Europe."
What has happened is that the Iraq situation has thrown into high relief, sooner rather than later, the various bits of historical and cultural baggage that the enlarged Europe brings with it. Last year, in the interests of increased transparency, European Commission President Romano Prodi famously said that EU figureheads should not be afraid "to say in public what we think in private."
After the Chirac broadside on Poland and its neighbours, perhaps he might now reconsider that noble assertion.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
I know it looks bad when a senior European leader, indeed a president of all things, tells you to shut up and stop poking your nose in where it isn't wanted, but hey, that's European Union diplomacy for you.
If it's any consolation, it wasn't just Poland that Jacques Chirac was getting at last week: he levelled accusations of bad behaviour and childishness at all of the EU candidate countries which signed letters more or less siding with America in the Iraq crisis.
Besides, it had been a long day. What happened was this: it was last Monday night at an emergency summit that few EU leaders wanted to have for fear that it would expose their deep differences over Iraq. It was a meeting of the 15 leaders and not the 25, largely because the French didn't want any lectures on war from young upstarts who aren't even in the club yet.
Predictably, agreement was reached around a lowest-common-denominator statement warning Saddam Hussein that time was running out. It was at about this point that someone, unwisely, decided to observe that there was now growing support for the American stance in what we know as the "new Europe."
Then Chirac let rip. His point was that new members of the EU club should be seen and not heard, particularly if they haven't yet got their membership cards. And yes, there were suggestions within the French camp that Romania and Bulgaria in particular should watch it, otherwise someone just might put a French-speaking spanner in the works of their less-than-mature EU membership applications.
You will have read by now of the universal shock, horror and outrage at such remarks, not just in many central and east European countries, but within the existing EU, too.
My favourite response is from the soft-spoken leader of the British Labour Euro-MPs, Gary Titley, who said: "It's bloody outrageous. In fact, it's bloody disgraceful!" One reporter, knowing him to be a mild-mannered individual asked: "Do you really mean to say 'bloody?'"
Titley replied: "Yes, I bloody do!"
So, no points for the French president in the midst of one of the most difficult political and diplomatic phases the EU has been through in a long while.
The day after the outburst, Prime Minister Leszek Miller failed to turn up at a mini-summit for candidate EU leaders to be briefed on what had happened. Then someone pointed out that he was on a trip to India and had sent a sick note, and several other dignitaries did the same. They were, said many, miffed at being treated as second-class EU leaders, but Chirac's point is that you can't start expressing clear points of view about the club until your membership starts running, and that is not until next May. Meanwhile, just stand over there and behave yourself, or else.
Is there long-term fallout from this outburst beyond the Iraq crisis? Probably, but it is a far more complex jigsaw than the cackhanded American characterisation of "old Europe-new Europe."
What has happened is that the Iraq situation has thrown into high relief, sooner rather than later, the various bits of historical and cultural baggage that the enlarged Europe brings with it. Last year, in the interests of increased transparency, European Commission President Romano Prodi famously said that EU figureheads should not be afraid "to say in public what we think in private."
After the Chirac broadside on Poland and its neighbours, perhaps he might now reconsider that noble assertion.
Geoff Meade is the European Union editor of the Press Association.
