Eastern promise confronts reality

Date: 11/12/1997

When they join the EU, Poles will account for one in every eight Union citizens. And, as Mark Turner reports, they have no intention of abandoning their rich heritage for the sake of integration “THE test for the Union's ability to enlarge is whether it can enlarge to Poland,” asserts Jaroslaw Pietras, technocratic doyen of Warsaw's integration committee.

He makes his assertion with a twinkle in his eye. The clear implication is: 'Union enlargement is enlargement to Poland.'

He is absolutely right. Of the six countries on the EU's enlargement short list, Poland is by far the largest, most challenging and potentially the most profitable.

If the Union can find a way to accommodate the country's groaning agriculture sector, heavy industry and 40 million people in search of the western dream, the rest of the enlargement process will seem easy by comparison.

Furthermore, there is a growing acceptance - fostered by European Commission officials - that until Warsaw signs on the dotted line, the other EU applicants will simply have to wait.

Of course, none of this comes as any great surprise. It has been clear for years that Germany and France have Poland tagged as the prize fish in the eastern pond, and place a contented Warsaw way up their foreign policy agenda.

As far as the Union's leading politicians are concerned, Poland offers an Asian miracle on its very doorstep and a crucial zone of stability on its eastern borders.

But in its rush to bring Warsaw on board, the EU has somewhat overlooked one crucial factor.

Poland is not Europe's Wild East, a vast, empty land ripe for exploitation. It is a proud country with a history and culture commensurate with any existing member state. The Poles, who will account for one in every eight Union citizens sometime in the next decade, have no intention of losing their heritage.

As a result, the Union will have to start thinking not only about how the EU will change Poland, but also how Poland will change the EU.

Poland's potential weight is already apparent. The recent string of battles over agricultural access, steel, oil, cars and milk have provided early clues to the real impact of Polish accession.

Even before the start of negotiations, the deepening splits over EU structural funding (essentially over how the Union can meet eastern needs without abandoning the South) demonstrate the propensity of Polish affairs to pit existing Union governments against each other.

These difficulties, asserts Pietras, are a consequence of his country's size rather than the particular nature of its problems. “Issues in Poland have a different meaning for the member states than those in other countries,” he says.

But whatever the reason, the degree to which the Union will have to adapt to Polish needs is only just filtering through.

It is already well recognised that the advent of Polish agriculture will constitute a sledgehammer blow to the Common Agricultural Policy. But forthcoming battles over environmental policy, free movement of people and customs are also suddenly looking very serious.

The question now facing the Union is to what degree it is genuinely willing to make allowances for Poland's particular circumstances.

If, as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac still suggest, Poland is to join right at the beginning of the next decade, the Union will have to bend over backwards.

If the accession process takes a lot longer - beyond 2002 or 2003 - Brussels will have a lot of explaining to do.

The trouble, suggests the European Commission's representative in Warsaw Rolf Timans, is that in the meantime the Poles are beginning to assume that they will wield rather more influence in the enlargement process than is actually the case.

“What they do not understand is that much of the accession negotiation is not a negotiation at all, it is the imposition of EU standards,” says Timans. “Poland's position is less strong than under NATO: geostrategic considerations play less of a role in the Union. If Slovenia were ready in 2001, and Poland were not, I would think that Slovenia should not have to wait for the last carriage in the train.”

As Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek likes to stress, the Poles are the demandeurs. EU officials add that the bottom line is that Poland simply has to join the Union to survive and therefore has little ammunition up its sleeve.

Yet Poland's conviction that enlargement cannot begin without it is compelling. Politician after politician in Warsaw asserts simply, with almost religious certainty, that the country will be in the first wave of new members. They add that an increasingly despondent Union needs Poland every bit as much as Poland needs the EU.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski asserts that his country offers a new breed of youthful enthusiasts much needed in a flagging Europe.

So does cinematographer and influential Warsaw intellectual Krzysztof Zanussi. “Poland can take to the EU a kind of vitality. Everything is so sclerotic in Brussels at the moment,” he declares.

Furthermore, he says: “We have a moral superiority, because we have lived a hard life”.

The Polish clergy's vision of a Europe united under Christian values may seem rather alien to the continent's secular millions, but the crowds that still flock to see Polish Pope John Paul II suggest that it is one which many in the EU share.

And although few are prepared to admit it, Poland may prove to be the pre-eminent leader amongst the central European applicants.

“Poland feels responsibility for central Europe,” says Kwasniewski who, while he does not wish to cast himself as a local powerbroker, nevertheless adds: “It is my priority to organise relations in this region.”

Neither are Poles afraid to talk about their own vision of the Union. According to free-market politician and future secretary-general of Poland's integration committee Piotr Nowina-Konopka, his country views the EU as neither an American-style federal system nor a free trade area.

“Poland had for a long time a sense of 'national deficit'. For us, the notion of the member state is predominant; we support a feeling a bit like the Nordic identity,” he says.

Overall, this is a confident country that expects its dues. In the short term, this will translate into some big headaches for the European Commission.

As its officials prepare the draft text of a new EU-Poland accession partnership, Warsaw is already complaining about its contents.

“We do not agree that we should align our public procurement rules by 1998,” complains Pietras. “The Commission says we should strengthen our eastern borders, but does not make it clear whether they should be treated like an external frontier of the Union or merely reinforced. Also, there is no help envisaged for transport, where there is plenty of legislation to adopt.”

The list goes on. But faced with these complaints, Timans' attitude speaks volumes. “We simply feel there are some things they should do more quickly,” he says, with a forbearing shrug. “It is often not understood that the earlier Poland aligns, the better it will do.”

In the final analysis, the Union will tolerate Polish exuberance only so far. Yes, the country is crucially important. Yes, the EU will need to make allowances. But when push comes to shove, Brussels will wield its authority like a fond parent cautioning an adolescent child.

If Poland truly intends to accede on its own terms, it would do well to learn the rules of the game - and play by them.