Domestic policy a priority for Polish premier

Date: 01/12/05

In Brussels last week, a gushing Commission President Jos�anuel Barroso said that he was in no doubt that his guest, the new Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, was a committed European.

In choosing Brussels as the venue for his first trip abroad, Marcinkiewicz sought to send a similar message and allay fears that his minority government, although propped up by Eurosceptic parties Samoobrona (Self De-fence) and the League of Polish Families, is anti-EU.

From officials to ministers, Polish officialdom is chanting the mantra of continuity. "The pre-election period in every country is a special period, not only in Poland," said Foreign Minister Stefan Meller, explaining away some of the government's anti-European, anti-homosexual and anti-free market rhetoric that raised eyebrows in Brussels. "I would like to assure you that this is without doubt a pro-European government and a government that wants to be perceived as pro-European," he said.

Coming from a career diplomat with few links to party politics this is perhaps unsurprising. But senior officials are adamant that the government's interests lie in domestic policy - the implication is clear: the diplomats are in charge, the policy is the same.

The governing Law and Justice Party, they say, is more interested in what the Anglophile Minister of Defence Radoslaw Sikorski describes as ending the post-Communist period - reforming the security services which largely avoided the purges seen in the Baltic States and East Germany.

On Friday (25 November), Sikorski released a map from the Cold War era showing a possible Warsaw Pact counterattack against a NATO nuclear strike, risking the ire of Russia but embarrassing some in the military and intelligence services who, he said, backed a plan which would have destroyed Poland.

But, while Poland's relations with Russia may be unharmed, on issues involving money, Poland's foreign and domestic interests appear to be on a collision course.

One such clash could be found in the tortuous negotiations over the EU budget.

While Warsaw's foreign policy types stress that the Marcinkiewicz administration, like the previous government, could be willing to go the extra yard to get a deal, Marcinkiewicz has said it is better to have no deal than a bad deal.

Privately, Marcinkiewicz has been telling his advisers that he likes cigars - an opaque reference to former Spanish premier Jos�ar�a Aznar's behaviour during negotiations over the last EU budget in Berlin in 1999. Throughout the bilateral meeting Aznar apparently blew cigar smoke in the face of the then president of the Council, Gerhard Schr�der, rejecting Schr�der's requests for a compromise. Aznar, known for a tough stance in defending Spain's interests in the EU, is a role model, according to Marcinkiewicz.

Domestic policies look like taking priority over the EU commitments in other areas. Last week Marcinkiewicz insisted that no decision would be made on Poland adopting the euro until 2008 and that he thought even then it would be a "good idea" to hold a referendum, despite Poland being obliged to join the single currency under the terms of its accession to the EU.

Behind this reticence, say critics, are the government's election commitments to keep the budget deficit under control while cutting tax and boosting social spending.

Marcinkiewicz has vowed to keep Poland's budget deficit at around �7.5 billion, above the limit of 3% of gross domestic product set by the rules underpinning the single currency.

According to a senior member of the prime minister's office, the government's main aim is to avoid price rises that it thinks entry into ERM II - the stepping stone for joining the euro - will provoke.

But with the International Monetary Fund revising Polish growth projections down for 2005, critics argue that joining ERM II has lost out to domestic popularity and the need to balance unrealistic taxation and public spending commitments.

If this can also please Eurosceptic supporters then so much the better, they say.

Jan Rokita, the man tipped by many before the election as the most likely prime minister, is one such critic. After his Civic Platform party narrowly lost the elections he was brutally snubbed in coalition talks with his old Solidarity allies and he now fears the minority government will avoid difficult economic decisions.

"There is going to be a continuation of the policies of the Left, the previous government. If this happens it would mean a very high public debt in Poland and a very high level of taxes and labour costs," he said.

"The government has the temporary support of two very radical partners and it is not good for the Polish society. A government which is supported by radical parties must make decisions which please these parties and those decisions may be wrong for the state. The promises made about lowering tax and increasing social benefits are completely unrealistic."

If Rokita is right, the next time Marcinkiewicz travels to Brussels, Barroso might not be quite so gushing.

Author takes a look at the new Polish Government under Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and prospects for relations with the European Union.