Charlemagne: Those pesky Poles

Date: 29/11/03

In which old members offer new ones some lessons in negotiation

SELFISH, greedy, nationalistic, unEuropean. Not France or Germany, you understand, which have just upset the European Commission and many smaller countries by riding roughshod over the euro's stability pact. No, these insults are being heaped on the poor Poles, as the tortuous negotiations over a new constitution for the European Union lurch towards a conclusion. What have the Poles done to deserve such odium?

The problem is that they are fighting like alley cats for what they see as their national interests. Siren voices in Brussels, Paris and Berlin are warning the Polish government that it is making a terrible mistake. It is a newcomer to the club and has failed to understand its essential feature: the “culture of compromise”. All countries must occasionally sacrifice their national interests to serve the greater European cause. Poland must realise this great truth and buckle under, before it harms both the EU and itself.

The biggest issue causing grief is the proposal in the draft constitution to adopt a new voting system. Under the putative “double majority”, a law would be passed if it won the support of a majority of EU countries, representing 60% of the total population. This would replace the system agreed upon at a summit in Nice in December 2000, in which countries were awarded “weighted votes”. Under the Nice formula, Germany, with a population of over 80m, gets 29 votes, the same number as France, Britain and Italy, each of which has a population of roughly 60m. Poland and Spain, with populations of some 40m each, get 27 votes apiece. In their more candid moments, even the Poles recognise that this system is bizarrely advantageous to them. As a Polish minister once confided to your correspondent, “We have a population half the size of Germany's and an economy about a tenth the size, and yet we get 27 votes to their 29. We would be crazy to turn down a deal like that.”

The EU was certainly crazy to offer a deal like that. That it came up with such a strange voting system was the result of the politics and panic of the moment. Double majority was proposed at Nice, but France, which held the EU presidency at that time, refused to accept the system because it gave Germany relatively more power. The Poles, who were not even at the table in Nice, were the happy beneficiaries of a combination of French intransigence and Spanish negotiating skills.

There is no doubt that “double majority” is more democratic and more comprehensible than the Nice formula. But the Poles have respectable arguments for sticking to their position. The Polish people have just voted to join the EU in a referendum, based on the terms offered to them at Nice. Now, after the vote, and just a few months before Poland's formal entry next May, the EU is belatedly trying to retract its offer. The switch to double majority was proposed by the Convention on the Future of Europe in June, which claimed to be an open and democratic exercise. But the new voting system was decided upon at the last minute by the convention's presidium (steering committee), on which there was no Polish representative. Even at the time, the Poles and the Spanish made it clear they did not accept the idea.

Dogs in mangers

But, beyond the negotiating intricacies, don't the Poles have a moral obligation to accept that Nice is plain silly and that double majority would be better? Surely the EU should be about more than “what we have, we hold”? In an ideal world, undoubtedly. But all the huffing by current members of the EU about the need to think of the “European interest” would be more convincing if they were to apply the same principle to themselves. Where is the European interest in the Franco-German decision to trash the stability pact, simply because the French and Germans cannot control their budget deficits? Where is the European interest in France's dogged defence of the wasteful and protectionist common agricultural policy, which just happens to shovel huge wads of cash to French farmers? Where is the European interest in Britain's insistence on keeping its budget rebate, no matter what? Or in Spain's relentless determination to cling on to a disproportionate share of EU regional aid?

The Poles, however, are newcomers, and relatively poor at that. As a result, they seem to be expected to mind their manners and just be grateful for all the EU money that will soon head their way. Even when current members try to sound sympathetic, their attitude is deeply condescending. Viscount Etienne Davignon, a Belgian former vice-president of the European Commission, and the epitome of the EU's great and good, says: “We have to remember that the Poles have only recently regained their national sovereignty and are new to the European Union. It takes many years of membership before people really understand how Europe works.” The notion that the Poles and the other seven central European countries that are joining next year (along with Malta and Cyprus) might just possibly have ideas that are as valid as those of the six “founder members” is apparently too fanciful to contemplate.

The fact is that the entry of Poland into the EU is profoundly unsettling to traditionalists. European integration began with Franco-German reconciliation after the second world war. The EU's main institutions are still strung out along the Franco-German borderlands, in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. For French and German politicians, it is axiomatic that their relationship should remain the fulcrum around which the EU revolves. But enlargement will shift the centre of gravity. The decision of the Poles (and most other central Europeans) to take a pro-American line over Iraq went down particularly badly in France, prompting Jacques Chirac's now infamous remark that the newcomers had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”. Now that the constitutional negotiations are reaching a crunch, the Poles are again being invited to “shut up”. So far, they have declined the invitation. How very shocking.

Poland is refusing to be quiet and compliant as it joins the European Union.