The dream is over?
Last week saw an explosion of political activity around the topic that is rapidly turning out to be the No. 1 internal and external political headache for Polish politicians: the European Union (EU). Until now, the familiar cry from Polish politicians was that the whole issue of the speed and principle of EU membership was one that united rather than divided the political class; yet the events of the last few days show that behind the declarations, that consensus may be coming to an end.
The nature of discussions of Polish membership in the EU have come a long way since the heady days of the early 1990s, when both EU politicians and Poles were unanimous in their expectation that Poland, alongside at least Hungary and the Czech Republic, would be fully fledged EU members by the turn of the millennium. Certainly, that was the message from the West: on the wave of rhetoric over newfound freedoms and liberties in Central Europe, few Western politicians were able to make a speech about European affairs without predicting rapid EU membership to the Poles and their neighbors. Only a few years ago, President Jacques Chirac was promising in the Polish Parliament to admit Poland by 2000.
Few Central European politicians, however, now have any illusion that such membership is possible much before 2005. That illusion has been shattered mainly by the inertia of the EU itself, as well as by the failure on the part of senior EU politicians to earmark an accession date. Faced with the choice of on the one hand rapidly expanding the EU toward Central Europe and therefore keeping it as a looser trading bloc, and on the other hand integrating EU structures and institutions at the expense of bringing in new members, the EU has clearly chosen the latter path.
That has led to public tensions between Polish and EU politicians, and criticism of the EU position even from Poles regarded as Europhiles. Prime among the "new critics" of the EU is none other than former Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek himself, who at first criticized the federal plans for Europe outlined by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, and last week albeit as ex-foreign minister gave a radio interview stating that the EU had run out of steam in pushing for expansion. That comes as a bitter defeat for a politician who staked the last few years of his career on supporting Poland's EU membership.
The slowdown of Poland's prospects of rapid EU membership has been quickly exploited by the current Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) opposition, who last week went on a high-level political visit to Brussels. During that visit, they suggested that much of the slowness of the accession talks was due to "unrealistic" demands by the Polish side on such issues as land purchase rights for foreigners. That enraged Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, not only because such comments broke the principle that opposition parties do not talk down their country's government while abroad, but also because it threatened what over the last few weeks has been a delicately constructed political consensus around EU expansion. That consensus is reflected in the establishment last week of a grand all-party European Law Committee in Parliament, designed to coordinate and accelerate the acceptance of EU legislation. Now, it will be instructive to see how the committee works and the degree of consensus it achieves and how the rhetoric of pro-EU sentiments is reflected in practice.
Despite the criticism of the SLD that the current government and Solidarity Election Action (AWS) in general is Euro-sceptic, it has to be said that most of Poland's right-wing politicians remain dyed-in-the-wool Europhiles in comparison with their counterparts in Hungary and the Czech Republic. There, the leaders of the right Prime Minister Victor Orban and former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus respectively routinely assail the EU in public and openly talk of life outside the "Europe." In contrast, Buzek has never wavered in his public enthusiasm for Brussels. Yet the truth is that that the longer the EU procrastinates, the more chances there are that a genuinely Euro-sceptic political leader and a popular one at that might emerge from among the right. Some signs of this could be seen in the speech given by Marian Krzaklewski, AWS leader and the right's presidential candidate, at his opening campaign rally last week when he spoke of his support for a "Europe of Nations" and not the European superstate.
Unfairly criticized for stirring the anti-EU pot, Krzaklewski's speech was in fact mild and aimed more at defusing the threat to his vote from the hard-line right than any signal of an important policy shift. But political observers should be aware: a combination of an uncritically pro-EU left, an obstinate Brussels establishment, and the examples of political success by Euro-sceptic politicians elsewhere in Central Europe will be more than enough to turn more members of the Polish political establishment into critics, rather than supplicants, of the EU.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
