WARSAW, Poland—“Radoslaw Sikorski [Polish minister of foreign affairs] has seriously violated the constitution. He claimed in no uncertain terms that Poland ought to be part of a confederation, and thus stop being an independent nation. This is a case for the State Tribunal.”
So crowed Jaroslaw Kaczynski last week, Poland’s former prime minister and leader of the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice. The subject of his outrage was the recent views expressed by Minister Sikorski at the German Society of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.
“[N]ot terrorism, not the Taliban, certainly not German tanks, … not even the Russian rockets President [of Russia Dmitri] Medvedyev has threatened to install near EU borders. The biggest threat to the security and welfare of Poland would be the collapse of the eurozone,” Sikorski had said.
Sikorski’s words, spoken during a presentation called Poland and the Future of Europe were in reference to the major European financial crisis that has been pounding the eurozone and rocking markets the world over.
Sikorski beseeched Germany, Poland’s historic enemy, to take a larger role in Europe to solve the crisis.
“I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper,” he said. “You know full well that nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe’s indispensable nation.”
So far, Poland has fared remarkably well, standing out as a “green island” in a sea of crisis, as Poland’s government leaders have been fond of putting it. It’s true that Poland has braved the crisis better than any other country and is the only EU country with positive GDP growth during the critical crisis years and has a golden rule debt limit already in its constitution, set at 60 percent of GDP.
France and Germany want to see a change to the EU Constitution to include a so-called golden rule, prohibiting the deficit to exceed a certain level.
But few cognoscenti believe that the crisis will bypass Poland altogether. And the government, freshly re-elected, has been following in France’s footsteps in announcing an increase in the retirement age and other major fiscal reforms designed to prevent Poland’s sharing the fate of the faltering PIIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.
And Sikorski seems to have stepped out onto the skinny branches of pan-European political propositions that have both raised the ire (of Polish patriots of Kaczynski’s ilk) and earned praise.
The minister’s call for a stronger, more centralized decision-making locus in Brussels and a ceding of some authority by individual member states may be the Brave New World approach needed to keep the whole kit together.
“Unless we’re prepared to risk a partial dismemberment of the EU, then we will be faced with the most difficult decision facing any federation: deeper integration or collapse.”
To some, however, like Poland’s nationalist right, this proposition appears offensive to the extreme, particularly seeing as a concentration of decision making at an EU level means a de facto increase in the ability of EU’s most powerful player, Germany, to call the shots.
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