EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts

Crash[i-Crash]
The Times and many others report that Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were killed in a aircraft crash this morning.

They were on board a flight which crashed at 10.56 Moscow time (0656 GMT) near Smolensk airport. Russian media is reporting that all 132 passengers were killed.

The Kaczynskis, we are told, were travelling with several senior government figures on a trip to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn forest massacre, in which thousands of Poles were executed by Soviet secret police.

It is far too early and wholly inappropriate to assess what, if any, are the political implications. Understandably, the Polish peoples are in shock. We can only convey our sympathy.

COMMENT THREAD

Jaruzelski[i-Jaruzelski]As we all know, many of the people in high positions in former Communist countries, including their representatives in EU institutions, are not just erstwhile members of the Communist party but people who had had high position in it or, not infrequently, in the security services of the countries in question. The latter is of some importance because anyone who had risen high in the East European secret service would have been trained in the Soviet Union.

For various reasons, not least the fact that Communism deliberately involved as much of the population as possible in the running of the system, full lustration has never been possible and has been deliberately avoided by most political parties.

Poland has decided to break with that in a way that may rebound on the government though, undoubtedly, it seemed like an easy target, unlike, say, the unravelling of the truth around Lech Walesa.

The BBC reports that General Jaruzelski is to go on trial for imposing martial law on the country in 1981 and clamping down on all opposition, including the trade union movement Solidarity. Dozens of people were killed and many more imprisoned. Also, the left in the West, particularly in Europe was once again shocked by the intolerance of the Soviet system. Ah well, live and learn, except that they never do.

The general, who is 85 and in poor health, is being tried with various colleagues of his. The defence is that if he had not imposed his own military rule the Soviet Union would have invaded or, to be quite precise, would have sent many more troops in to bolster the existing contingent stationed in the country and would have imposed order far more brutally.

It seems, according to the BBC, that many people in Poland do believe this and that is why the belated prosecution may not be as popular as the Polish government hopes. The time to have done this was immediately after the fall of the Communist system. For various reasons the Solidarity government decided not to go after Jaruzelski then. 15 years and many other problems on it is probably too late.

I do not like drawing inexact historical parallels but the news that Poland and the USA will shortly sign (if, indeed, have not already done so, as the BBC Russian Service says) that agreement for setting up a defence shield made me smile (as well as I can do so after a very painful session in the dentist's chair).

The plan would see the US base 10 missile interceptors in Poland in exchange for help strengthening Polish defences, said PM Donald Tusk.

Of course, the parallels with 1938/9 are not really that. It was the Poles who were dragging their feet this time but I imagine the argument about strengthening Polish defences came to the fore in those negotiations.

Klaus_Kaczynski[i-Klaus_Kaczynski]EUBusiness reports the AFP story that there is a meeting due between the two presidents, Kaczynski and Klaus, in Prague tomorrow (Thursday). The main, indeed the only item on the agenda is the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty.

But a senior Polish official dismissed reports that Kaczynski was there to try to influence Klaus's position on the treaty.

"The debate on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon is following its own course in the Czech Republic," Mariusz Handzlik, Director of Poland's Office of Foreign Affairs, told AFP in Warsaw.

"President Klaus' position is well known. But the problem remains to be solved in Ireland, not in the Czech Republic or in Poland," he added.

So, if President Kaczynski, the remaining twin, is not trying to influence President Klaus, what is there to discuss?

As it happens, the Czech President's powers are limited in this respect. The Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, has already made it clear that he was in favour of the treaty going through, assuming that the Constitutional Court decides on that side. If it so does, there will be nothing President Klaus will be able to do as it will be to the two Houses of Parliament to vote it through (as well as the decision on the radar system).

President Kaczynski, having announced with great pomp and circumstance that the Treaty was dead (a bit like Marlow and the doornail) changed his mind after a conversation with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who clearly has necromancic powers. Certainly, the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty was once again alive in Poland.

The Czech Republic takes over the Presidency in January 2009 and, clearly, does not want to be in the embarrassing position of being one of the few countries holding up the ratification. Not that it is likely to have gone through by then. Will it happen before the next Toy Parliament elections?

poland_eagle[i-poland_eagle]To nobody’s particular surprise the Polish Senate as well as the Lower House, the Sejm, has voted the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty through with a 74 to 17 vote with 6 abstentions. Commission President Barroso and the Slovenian Presidency welcomed this display of European solidarity on the part of Polish politicians.

It would appear from this report in the Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza that there was a certain amount unfriendly discussion before the vote went through.

Seventy four senators cast their votes for the treaty - the Civic Platform (PO), the non-affiliated post-communist Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, and 15 Law and Justice (PiS) senators, including deputy Senate speaker Zbigniew Romaszewski. However, there was a split in the PiS caucus, with 17 senators voting against and five abstaining (as did the non-affiliated Lucjan Cichosz).

The Law and Justice Party is that of President Lech Kaczynski, the one remaining comedian on the Polish political scene, who was there in Lisbon and negotiated, if that is what the process to be called, for Poland.

As the various negotiations between the politicians went on, some of the PiS representatives became emotional, calling on Poland’s history to give them strength:

And though no voting discipline was introduced in the caucus, following Mr Romaszewski's declaration the Prime Minister, reassured, left the Senate. And a group of clearly relaxed PO senators went for lunch to the Senate canteen. 'This means that all the votes in the PiS caucus have been counted and at least the PiS Senate committee leaders will vote yes', one of the PO senators explained to the members of the press.

During the same time, the treaty's opponents stepped forward, though they spoke without much conviction. 'This will be a new partition of Poland. The Lisbon treaty establishes a new state called the European Union and Poland will be but an administrative unit in it!' warned Ryszard Bender. At the same time, the PiS eurosceptics were obviously trying not to attack President Lech
Kaczyński who had negotiated the treaty. 'Our dear President fought bravely in Brussels as the real son of the Polish knights from Grunwald, Chocim and Vienna. But there's no certainty that the safeguards he's negotiated will work. It is not always that Poland will be governed by patriots who have God, the fatherland and honour in their hearts', said Janina Fetlińska.

It is at times like this and reading bilge of this kind that I begin to doubt my own certainty that history must be learnt at school. Not if it means that politicians produce unilluminating parallels that hide reality.

Still, an important victory was won, though it has not been widely reported. As 365Gay.com reports, a proviso was added that the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is an integral part of the treaty, will be implemented without the rights it grants to gays and lesbians. On the whole, it seems unlikely that provisos like that, negotiated by the Prime Minister and the opposition are worth anything once you are implementing European legislation.

Ah well, we warned them.

Emile+Lahoud[i-Emile+Lahoud]First the country that has postponed a vote yet again although it needs one rather badly. Rick Moran reports in American Thinker that

Unable to achieve a consensus on which Christian politician should serve as president, both pro and anti-government forces agreed to delay the vote in Parliament to choose a successor to current pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

The story is based on a Reuters report, which adds a European dimension:

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and his Spanish and Italian counterparts Miguel Moratinos and Massimo D'Alema, urged rival factions to reach a swift deal during a visit to Lebanon last week.

"The ministers reiterated the urgency of an inter-Lebanese accord in terms of this crucial election, and our availability to continue working towards that end," deputy French Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said on Monday.

That ought to do it, I expect. Hezbollah will, undoubtedly, see the light and negotiate with the Maronites.

On to the elections that did happen. First off, Switzerland, to whose electoral campaign we have referred to before.

Spp-poster[i-Spp-poster]The Swiss People’s Party, described by such wonderfully democratic institutions as the UN Human Rights Commission as being extremist and right-wing but, in actual fact, the party that held the largest number of seats even before the election, has won handsomely, getting 29 per cent of the vote and 62 seats out of 200 in the Lower House, the National Council.

Although many saw the campaign as tainted by racism or xenophobia, the Swiss elected their first black parliament member Sunday — Ricardo Lumengo of the Social Democrats, an Angolan who arrived in Switzerland as an asylum seeker the 1980s and subsequently became a legal expert.

Well, go figure, as they say on the other side of the Pond.

Of course, this election is important in symbolism more than in reality. Because of the complicated electoral system, the Swiss government will go on being a coalition of four parties and the cantons will carry on being far more important than said government.

For all of that the Swiss have shown their mettle. They want to be ruled in the way they decide and they do not want to have their very special culture destroyed. In my opinion they made a serious mistake when they decided to join the UN in 2002 after keeping out of that corrupt tranzi organization for decades, but they are making up for that.

We can be reasonably certain that there will be little talk of Switzerland joining the EU or, even, the EEA for some time to come.

Donald+Tusk[i-Donald+Tusk]On to the next election that took place this Sunday. Yes, folks its Polish politics time again. It seems that Prime Minister Kaczynsky managed to annoy the Polish electorate to such an extent that they actually turned out to vote in larger numbers than before to trounce him and his party. Well, by larger than before numbers we mean 54 per cent.

The Polish pro-business party, Civic Platform, today took a strong position as a result of the parliamentary elections Sunday, winning 41.4 percent of the total vote with 99 percent of returns counted.

Donald Tusk will now start negotiations to form the new coalition government, in the first place with the Polish Peasants’ Party, in the somewhat uncomfortable knowledge that the good twin, Lech Kaczynski will still be President and in position to veto legislation.

As ever, it is impossible to predict what will happen on the international front. At the moment the EU leaders are pleased because Donald Tusk is known as a supporter of the EU and its rather elusive “values” while Kaczynski was known as a troublemaker.

On the other hand, as we have pointed out on numerous occasions on this blog, Jaroslaw Kaczynski may have yapped loudly but found himself in agreement with whatever was being proposed as soon as some kind of a bribe, however indefinable, materialized. One suspects, Donald Tusk will have quite similar policies.

Another issue will be the American alliance. The Kaczynskis have tended to be staunchly pro-American and anti-Russian …. rather like all their predecessors in post-Communist Polish governments.

The New York Times, who had not been happy at so much European support for the United States in Iraq, preferring to think of Bush as someone who isolated the country, is clutching at what might be described as straws:

Mr. Tusk said during the campaign that he would have driven a harder bargain over support of plans to place missile interceptors on Polish soil and that, if elected, he would try to bring home the 900 Polish troops in Iraq.

Not much in that, really. I can’t help feeling that Poland will continue to proved us with some entertainment on the political scene.

COMMENT THREAD

Geremek[i-Geremek]This is not a particularly new story but it is still worth blogging if for no other reason than to show that we are capable of being nice about Poles.

To start with, here is the report on UNWatch about a forthcoming event in Brussels (no, we are not talking about that demonstration) at the end of August:

Under the auspices of the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a "Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace" will take place on August 30-31 in Belgium. These meetings are part of a round-robin of anti-Israel gatherings organized year-round by the UN's 16-member Division for Palestinian Rights. It all dates back to 1975, when these mechanisms were installed within the UN on the same day that the General Assembly adopted its infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution. What is new, however, is the venue: the European Parliament in Brussels.

Sounds like an entirely appropriate venue. The article gives a more detailed prediction and explanation of what is likely to transpire:

What the conference will pronounce is pre-determined. Carefully pre-determined: the UN's Palestinian Division runs a tightly-controlled operation that accredits only anti-Israel NGOs and speakers. And recently they've become quite clever. Without altering the virulently anti-Israel nature of their meetings, the organizers instead seek to mask their activities — under such innocent-sounding titles as "support for Israeli-Palestinian peace." Moreover, to add credence to their cover, they invite specially approved "Israelis" — a select group of radicals who openly espouse hatred of Israel, claiming the license to do so because of their citizenship. Both tactics give conference organizers the cover they need for their allies and enablers to then use the material.

In a sense, one could write this off as another dog bites man story. UN produces a carefully orchestrated anti-Israeli conference, which will say nothing about the situation as it is in the Middle East but spend a good deal of time blathering about Israel being an apartheid state, the fence being a violation of Palestinian rights blah-blah-blah.

There will be no mention of those daily rocket attacks or of what is going on under Hamas rule in Gaza or the many violations of human rights in both Palestinian states.

So yawn and double yawn, except for the fact that some misguided individuals still think that the UN is the fount of international law and well-being and the European Parliament has any right to existence.

However, there is a twist to this story. A group of Polish MEPs, led by the redoubtable Bronislaw Geremek, who ought to have been made President of the European Parliament when the East European countries joined, have refused to attend the conference, declaring their support for Israel. Given Poland’s history, this was particularly welcome to the Israelis and, one must admit, all those who care about any possibility of democracy developing in the Middle East.

Europa 21, a Polish website reports (in English) that there is a strong move in Poland to oppose and, if possible, stop the conference taking place in the European Parliament. Gateway Pundit is following the story and gives a link to a petition to stop the conference, though why anyone should think that Members of the European Parliament are Ministers is incomprehensible.

COMMENT THREAD

Greek+fires[i-Greek+fires]One of the problems with the European Council instructing the IGC about what to put into the Constitutional Reform Treaty was that there was no guarantee that the same governments will be represented at the Conference as were at the Council.

The European Union is, as we know, indifferent to such niceties as elections and different parties coming to power. As the full process of EU legislation takes anything from five to ten years, governments can come and governments can go but the directives go marching on. And that is not to take into account the ten-year plan for such things as food labelling or financial regulation.

Nevertheless, there are likely to be problems with governments retiring, elections being called and, possibly, new people attending the IGC summit in October.

First off, as we know, was Poland, where elections are due to take place on October 21 though Prime Minister Kaczynski (Jaroslaw) has been sacking ministers, reckoning, one must assume that this is his last chance to do so. It will be Mr Kaczynski and Ms Fotyga, the Foreign Minister, but one wonders what validity their presence would be as the likelihood is that those would be the last days of the government.

I am not suggesting that if the Liberals win in the forthcoming election, there would be a change in attitude to the EU, not least because the chances are it will be another rather tense coalition, but an outgoing government does not have much of an authority in negotiations.

Now we have news that Greece is to have an election in September, six months before the government's term is to end. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis will see the President this afternoon and request a dissolution.

If opinion polls are anything to go by, the conservatives lead by one or two per cent, hardly enough to form a working government. Though the EU has praised Mr Karamanlis for setting Greece's budget on target (not yet achieved) of low deficits and serious reforms, the government is not particularly popular.

This is partly because, in order to achieve those low deficits and reforms, a certain amount of belt-tightening has been called for, though there has been no significant reduction in EU subsidy and partly because of the scandals associated with the government (just as the socialists lost in 2004 because of the scandals associated with them).

Not least, there have been devastating forest fires across Greece. As far as anyone can tell, most of the country's forests have been destroyed with untold damage to wildlife and human habitation. One problem seems to have been (we have been informed by one of our readers) is that the government has been wary of sending fire-fighting helicopters out, lest the water from them damaged even further the antiquated electric system and causeed more power cuts.

According to the BBC Theodore Rousoupoulos, the spokesman for the government explained:

The government, fully responsibly, asks the Greek people to decide on the future of the country, renewing their trust and giving a second strong mandate for another four years.

Sounds like asking for trouble rather than a strong mandate.

So, while the Polish government at the IGC will be on its last legs, the Greek government will, possibly, be a completely new one (not that any Greek politician is likely to turn against the EU) and more than likely elected with a small majority or an uneasy coalition.

COMMENT THREAD

Anna+Fotyga[i-Anna+Fotyga]Just days after Prime Minister Kaczynski (that’s Jaroslaw) announced an autumn election, the Foreign Minister, Anna Fotyga, not the most popular lady around despite her impeccable credentials as a Solidarnosc activist, gave an interview in which she expressed the opinion that Poland was still not being treated as equal in any of the western organizations it has joined.

The list of complaints is a mixed bag. For instance, Ms Fortyga is not happy that Russia complained and Germany expressed its shock because Poland agreed to deploy the US missile shield system. Why did nobody complain about Britain or Denmark, she asks indignantly, forgetting that, as a matter of fact, the Czech Republic is also part of the system and, yes, Russia complained about that, too. But then, historically, not much love has been lost between the Czechs and the Poles.

It was predictable (and, blowing my own trumpet, I predicted it several years before we started this blog) that there would be disagreements between the older and the newer members of the EU over foreign policy, attitudes to Russia and the United States being different in different parts of Europe. And so it happened, but it does involve other former Communist countries as well as Poland.

Besides, it is rather odd to complain about not being treated as an equal when you are clearly one of the US’s closest ally and acknowledged as such by the President.

Ms Fotyga’s complaints do not stop there. After all, the EU has not taken seriously Poland’s demands that it should have as many votes in the Council of Ministers as the larger countries like Germany. We have been through that row a few times and have come to the conclusion that it was of little significance to anybody except Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their doomed attempt to hang on to power.

Other complaints are a little more complicated. There is the growing problem of German works of art that found themselves in Polish hands after the war. They were not stolen from Germany, insists Ms Fotyga, but hidden by Germans who lived on the territory that Poland acquired after the war.

While we are on the subject, the question of that territory and the expulsion of Germans from it has been raising its ugly head and that, too, is part of Poland’s grievance.

Add to this attempts by a German conservative legislator, Erika Steinbach, to seek restitution or compensation from Warsaw after Germans fled or were expelled from Poland after 1945. "In Polish minds," Fotyga said, "this means the eradication of the obvious truth: responsibility for the Second World War."

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has distanced her government from Steinbach's claims. Nonetheless, the issue encapsulates the deeply sensitive relations between Warsaw and Berlin. "When you are bigger and more powerful, you have to be one hundred times more sensitive than your small neighbor, and never humiliate," Fotyga said.

So, let me get this straight: Poland is a small country and, therefore, its big neighbours should be extra sensitive to its plight. But it is a big country when it comes to wanting as many votes as its one bigger neighbour has. What would we do without Polish politicians for entertainment?

COMMENT THREAD

Kaczynski[i-Kaczynski]This is becoming a bit of a dog-bites-man-supermodel-takes-drugs story. Clearly not everyone in Poland is prepared to support the government indefinitely to the point of going into battle for a formula based on the square root of something or other to do with votes in the Council. My guess is that not many people know or care about those votes when bigger issues are at stake.

Poland is going through another process of members of the coalitions falling out with each other. As we reported about a month ago, problems started when Premier Kaczynski (that’s Jaroslaw) fired his Deputy and Agriculture Minister, Andrzei Lepper, the leader of the rural Self-Defence Party.

Though at first it looked like the party might remain in the coalition, a few days ago, Lepper announced that it was withdrawing from the government. At the same time, it was announced that Janusz Kaczmarek was also fired “under suspicion of having leaked classified information, obstructing an investigation into alleged bribery at the ministry of agriculture”.

According to Roman Giertych, Leader of the League of Polish Families (he of the interesting educational ideas), there has been a falling out between his party and the Kaczynskis’ Law and Justice Party and LPF Ministers are due to be sacked on Monday.

Unsurprisingly in the circumstances, the calls for an early elections have become louder. It seems that President Kaczynski (that’s Lech) has agreed with the leader of the main opposition party, Donald Tusk, that early elections will be necessary and there is news that his brother the Prime Minister has come round to that point of view, explaining that it will be on October 21 or, perhaps a week earlier or a week later but, at any rate, no later than November.

The two opposition parties, the Social-Democrats and the Civic Platform are also in favour of early elections, the latter particularly so, as its standing in the polls is higher than anyone else’s.

The Polish Parliament reconvenes on August 22 when it may well decide to dissolve itself in preparation for an autumn election.

COMMENT THREAD

Rospuda_valley[i-Rospuda_valley]Socialism creates so many problems. It even manages to create problems that are seemingly contradictory. For instance, one would think that the environment would suffer because a great deal of infrastructure – new roads, new railways – was built. Somehow, under socialism they managed to destroy a good deal of the environment without producing anything but the shabbiest kind of infrastructure.

Now that they have “rejoined the West” as the propaganda claimed during the referendum campaign, many of the East Europeans would like to sort out one or both of those problems, preferably with a bit of financial help from the ever so rich West.

This does not always work as the latest Polish kerfuffle shows. However, before I try to make some sense of that, I want to remind all our readers that yesterday was the anniversary of the start of the Warsaw uprising that ended tragically with thousands dead and most of Warsaw destroyed.

Warsaw_uprising[i-Warsaw_uprising]It is one of those unfortunate events in Eastern Europe that demonstrate how much more convoluted twentieth century history was there than in the West. Most urban uprisings in 1944 in occupied Europe took place in the West and were reasonably successful because the Allies raced to help them.

The Warsaw uprising failed, at least partly because of the non-action of the Soviet army that was ordered to stop on the other side of the Vistula, whence they watched the fighting and the suppression. Stalin had already decided that Poland would definitely be a Soviet colony after the war and had no intention to allow anyone else but his own soldiers to “liberate” the country.

Those members of the Home Army who had survived the ferocious German counter-action, were put on trial, imprisoned or executed by the Communist government. During my time in Oxford I knew reasonably well one of the military prosecutors of that period. She was married to an economist who took part in the terrible bullying that Communists meted out to non-Communist academics, in order to destroy their work and break their spirit before the secret police moved in.

Why were they in Britain? Ah well, what goes around, comes around. In 1968 the Polish government launched an attack on the few remaining Jews of the country and they found it necessary to leave for the West. By the 1980s these refugees were vocal in their support for the new trade unions who were dispensing with the Communist trade union officials. As, I believe I have said before, Communist history is full of such ironies.

Now, on to the problem of infrastructure and environment. The Polish radio reported

A group of inhabitants of Augustów, north-eastern Poland, have staged a picket in front of the European Commission and Greenpeace organization. It is a protest against a decision by the Polish Prime Minister to halt the construction of the controversial motorway from the ecologically unique Rospuda Valley in line with a request by the European Commission.

Their argument, which, if true, is perfectly valid that the particular section of the road, whose building has been suspended, is a necessary by-pass, to stop “tens of thousands” of heavy lorries from going through the town, killing and maiming children in the process.

The Mayor of Augustów has declared himself to be confident that they would win the case in the European Court of Justice where it has been sent by the Commission. One can’t help feeling that his other statement about not even considering alternative routes as these would take too long, might jeopardize his case.

The Times also reported the case, gleefully announcing that this was another example of Polish intransigence. As the Polish Prime Minister (one of those twins) has agreed to the suspension of the work, the intransigence does not seem to be all that great.

The disputed road is part of a planned motorway, which, when completed will link Warsaw to Helsinki through the Baltic States. A good deal of it is being financed by the European Union, though, of course, the Poles are expected to put up some of the money. In particular, they maintain, the Rospuda Valley section will be entirely funded by Poland because of the environmental aspects.

snow-leopard[i-snow-leopard]The Rospuda Valley seems to be a remarkable habitat and has been designated as a nature reserve in line with what the Poles perceive as greater care for frogs than for Polish children. Even if we discard the now familiar bout of self-pity, one is faced with a familiar story, the likes of which we have seen in England.

By-passes are built to protect towns and their inhabitants. Almost certainly they go through areas of natural beauty and there are protests. Who is one to side with, given that the inhabitants of those towns send up a wail of protest periodically about the destruction of the environment (when it is somewhere else)?

As the Times points out the story is only just beginning.

It [the Commission] announced that it had asked the European Court of Justice to intervene. The case is expected to be the first of a number of environmental disputes as Eastern European members modernise their roads and railways. The motorway would mark the first time that a member state had proceeded with an infrastructure project in defiance of an EU order.

The whole problem, as I said above, is complicated by the fact that a good deal of the modernization will be financed by the taxpayer of the EU’s net contributors, though the Commissioners may well regard the money as theirs to do with as they will.

There is another aspect that is rarely discussed. A number of Polish environmental groups are also involved in the campaign and are complaining about the fact that their representatives are prevented from going to the area and studying the situation. These organizations are often financed by the blessed EU but most of them are rooted in the last few years of the Communist regime when a good deal of the dissident opposition in all the East European countries and the Soviet Union centred on environmental issues in response to the damage that the socialist governments had done and continued to do. They were much disliked by the authorities and are rather proud of the fact that they helped to bring the Communist regime down.

It would be interesting to know, for instance, who exactly the Mayor of Augustów is and what his own political background might be.

COMMENT THREAD

andrzej_lepper[i-andrzej_lepper]There is a possibility that the Kaczynskis are not actually going to be there at the IGC. Spiegel reports that Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has fired his deputy, the leader of the rural Self-Defence Party, Andrzej Lepper, who was also the Agriculture Minister.

Last time Lepper was fired was because he criticized the Prime Minister. This time the charge is a little more substantial: Lepper’s name has been linked to a corruption investigation that involves the Agriculture Ministry with two of his supporters arrested yesterday. Lepper is denying any connection.

The ousted Deputy Prime Minister immediately announced that he would not be returning to the government again and that his party was pulling out of the coalition. That would leave the Law and Justice Party running a minority government.

Opposition parties are filing motions for the dissolution of parliament but voting on them has been postponed, probably till September. At present Law and Justice is losing popularity and there is some doubt whether Self-Defence would achieve the 5 per cent of the vote that is necessary for parliamentary membership. This may well reinvigorate the coalition despite Lepper’s huffy comments.

COMMENT THREAD

Kaczynski+twins[i-Kaczynski+twins]Refusing to acknowledge the well-known truth that Germans have no sense of humour, Der Spiegel, has been indulging in Pole-baiting. Well, not seriously but for fun. They now have a section called Kaczynski Watch.

The latest article in the section was published two days ago and referred to an interview Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw K gave to Die Welt. In it he complained about the world’s unfairness. Everyone else talks about the war, why shouldn’t the Poles.

"I am very surprised by the view of those who say that one is not allowed to return to the questions of history," he told the newspaper. "The Germans return to this question. The expellee federations do, as does (head of the Federation of German Expellees), who is the daughter of a soldier of the occupation. The Jews also return to these questions, to the question of the Holocaust. Does that mean others are allowed to do it but not Poland?"

He also talked about "a revision of memory" in Germany. "Germany was not a victim of this war. Germany was the aggressor," he said. "If someone creates the impression that the suffering of Germany is comparable with that of Poland's, then that is very disturbing."

This is a highly entertaining mish-mash that gets us nowhere. More to the point, it gets Poland nowhere. It is undoubtedly true that Germany was the aggressor but that does not make the suffering of its population at the end of it any the less. One might say that they deserved it but that is a separate argument. They might even have deserved to be expelled from lands that were given to Poland but that is an issue of post-war behaviour.

Furthermore, as we have pointed out, Kaczynski’s attempt to make Poland sound larger than it is because of the numbers lost in the war remains a useless argument. Germany lost even more, as did a few other countries. Calculating on what might or might not have happened demographically if certain events had not taken place is not a very satisfactory basis for political demands.

As we have also pointed out at the time, calculating who was responsible for which deaths in Eastern Europe is tricky business, best not done in the circumstances of political negotiations.

There is another aspect to the Kaczynski show (apart from the sheer entertainment value) and one which Der Spiegel tries to work out. Exactly what was it that Lech K achieved in Brussels on that fateful week-end?

Kaczynski repeated Friday his claim that a verbal agreement had been reached, telling Die Welt that Merkel had assured him that decisions could be delayed by up to two years. "Verbal agreements are valid in civil law," he said. "There was a political agreement, a gentlemen's agreement, and as such it must be respected."

None of the other 26 EU members has backed Poland in its demands for a two-year blocking period, however. Other member states say they understood the deal to mean that Poland could only block decisions for several months. Kaczynski's new claim threatens to re-ignite the row over the treaty, which was agreed on after long and painful negotiations.

To be honest, even the right to block EU legislation for two years is not commensurate with the amount of effort that had been expended before the Council. If Kaczynski did not even make sure that there were witnesses to the verbal promise then all one can say that, perhaps, both brothers should stop worrying about what happened sixty-odd years ago and start paying attention to what is going on now.

Meanwhile, Roman Giertych, head of the ultra-Roman Catholic League of Polish Families and education minister, last heard of trying to ban large chunks of world literature from the curriculum, has announced that he and his party will oppose the “reformed treaty” for two reasons.

Firstly because there is no mention about God and Christianity, without which Europe “would be nothing”. The second reason indicates he knows as little about EU membership as do our own politicians:

Giertych also warned that the treaty would place EU law above Polish law, which he said would threaten Poles who live in western Polish lands that belonged to Germany before World War II.

It would actually affect Poles wherever they happened to live but, in any case, he is using the wrong tense. EU law is above Polish law and has been ever since Poland became member of this benighted institution.

It seems that Giertych like the Kaczynskis is still fighting those old battles instead of paying some attention to what is going on in Poland now. As we are talking about Poles who live in various places, what about those economically active Poles who are leaving the country to get jobs elsewhere? How do they affect the demography and economy of the country?

COMMENT THREAD

Kaczynskis.01[i-Kaczynskis.01]There appears to be no limit to the Poles’ ability to provide us all with entertainment. The Kaczynskis (a well-known comedy duo that goes around masquerading as president and prime minister) have come up with a new gimmick.

This morning’s Times put it succinctly: “Poles raise war dead before EU Summit”. As I reeled at the thought of some sort of a mass séance for the benefit of the gathering leaders and wondered who will be the medium or whether there will be more than one, given the numbers and what is the plural of medium, it became obvious that it is merely the idea of the war dead that the Poles are raising.

The subject at issue is still that pesky voting system. The Polish government (I cannot believe anybody else in Poland is interested in the subject at all) wants as many votes in the Council as Germany has or, perhaps, even more. Who can tell?

To this end the Kaczynskis are insisting on a different method of calculating votes that would involve the population and square roots and who knows what. Unfortunately, one runs into a serious problem immediately.

By population, does one mean population in residence? If so, then the Poles will have problems as a goodly proportion of their population is spread across western Europe in pursuit of the sort of income they cannot get at home as the economy is stagnating while Tweedledum and Tweedledee of East European politics play silly-ass games.

Their latest whiz is to say that Polish population should be calculated on the basis of a projected growth from the pre-1939 numbers as Poland lost rather a large number during the war.

While that is undoubtedly true, one has to point out that Germany also lost rather a large proportion of its population and if one started projecting that from 1938, taking into account the growth at the time, one would still end up with more German than Polish votes in the Council.

What the Poles are trying to raise is not so much the war dead but guilt and victimhood. This is not a particularly good idea when it comes to the Second World War.

The Evening Standard helpfully enumerates all the ways in which Poland suffered in the war and after it:

 After the Second World War Poland emerged around 20 per cent smaller with the borders being shifted westwards.
 The changes to the size of the country led to millions of people seeking new homes abroad.
 Over half a million fighting men and women, and six million civilians (22 per cent of the total population) died during the war.
 Up to 1.5 million people died in Auschwitz, in southern Poland, the largest of the concentration camps.
 The People's Republic of Poland was officially proclaimed in 1952 after a shift towards Stalinism following the war which led to years of totalitarian rule.

Problems arise immediately. Poland was shifted westwards and did lose some territory but it actually meant that it acquired some German land, which the Germans may well consider to be a little unfair. The shift was imposed by the Soviet Union, incidentally. The land Poland lost in the east is now part of Ukraine, another rather thorny issue.

It was not so much the changes in the size of the country but the successive political systems imposed on it by Germany and Soviet Union to start with, then Germany, then Soviet Union again that caused a certain desire on the part of many people to try to get to other countries, not least West Germany.

Then we come to the dead. It is that figure of 6 and a half million that is projected to give the present Polish population an increase of 28 million now. Do we count only those killed by the Germans or those killed in eastern Poland and the Soviet Union as well? Of the half a million fighting men and women quite a few fell victim to the Red Army and the NKVD.

One could argue that it is irrelevant who was responsible – dead is dead. Given that the Kaczynskis are trying to play on German guilt, the perpetrators are of some significance.

Then there is the question of the Polish Jews, possibly the thorniest of all. A fair proportion of those civilians were Jews (though I have no desire to become involved in the arguments as to what proportion exactly as there can be no question that non-Jews suffered badly as well).

There is a fair amount of evidence that the Poles in many places assisted the Gestapo reasonably enthusiastically in the rounding up and murder of the Jewish population. This article, on the other hand, concentrates on what it calls anti-Polish Jewish collaboration with the Red Army in eastern Poland that is the area occupied by the Soviet Union until June 1941.

Nor did the problems stop after the war. Returning Jews found that the Poles were not very welcoming and, indeed, there were quite a few murdered.

It has also been pointed out with a good deal of justification that Jews often took their revenge on the Poles they thought, rightly or wrongly, to have betrayed them to the Nazis.

Before I am taken to task, let me point out that I am very well aware of Poles who risked their lives to help Jews, of the Polish underground trying to get information out about the death camps and of the Home Army helping to save participants of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

I am also aware of the brutality with which both those uprisings were put down, though, again one needs to add that those who had survived the Nazi repression of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, mostly fell foul of the Soviet authorities and the Polish Communist government after the war.

One can go on analyzing the wartime losses of Poland and other countries in the area for a very long time and come to no conclusion whatsoever. Who would have thought that one day all that horror, all that tragedy, all that sacrifice will be used to argue for more votes in the European Council? It makes one very humble.

COMMENT THREAD

Joseph+Conrad[i-Joseph+Conrad]One should be grateful for the existence of Poland. What other country can provide us with quite so much entertainment in quite such a short period of time?

The latest news, as reported by Der Spiegel is a fight about literary syllabus in schools. Well, yes, now that you ask, there are countries and quite a few of them, where children have a literary syllabus in schools. Amazing, isn’t it?

Last week Roman Giertych, the Education Minister, announced that numerous classics of world literature (yes, m’lud, they are studied in schools in various countries) would be dumped in favour of well-approved, morally sound and, above all, Catholic writers.

Thus “the works of Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and the Polish-born Josef Conrad were to be dumped in favor of nationalist or Catholic authors like Henryk Sienkiewicz and the late Pope John Paul II. The aim was to instill patriotism in Polish youngsters.”

Other candidates for the scrap heap were modernist writers, including Polish ones, such as Witold Gombrowicz and Stanislaw Witkiewicz. Someone should tell the Education Minister about modern European history. After all, we have been here before and, actually, not that long ago. June 6 is a good day to remember what it was that so many, including the Poles (whose lives are now being offered up in sacrifice for the square root of the voting numbers in the European Council), fought for.

There was an immediate outcry in Poland and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in a rare attack of sanity, went on radio to announce that this may have been a joke but was in very poor taste. The classics, he insisted, will stay on the Polish school syllabus. Children will go on reading Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Josef Conrad.

I wonder if we might persuade the Poles to come over to this country to put together a literary syllabus for our schools that would include the classics of Britain and the world.

Much to the annoyance of the Polish President and Prime Minister (the brothers Kaczynski) the Polish Constitutional Court has ruled that the proposed new legislation that would have demanded assurances from thousands of Poles that they had not worked for the Communist secret police in any shape or form with the threat of ten years of unemployment for untruth, is not compatible with the country's constitution.

This has been greeted with some relief by many Poles, including Jan Rokita, an opposition politician the centre right Civic Platform, but not by the Kaczynskis. It seems that they have tried to exert some pressure on the court, accusing its members of being post-Communist left-overs.

In response to the ruling the President, Lech, muttered darkly that it was not over yet. We are waiting for the fat lady to sing.

COMMENT THREAD

Bronislaw+Geremek[i-Bronislaw+Geremek]We wrote a few weeks ago about the new Polish law of lustration that is not only demanding that all sorts of people should fill in a form with assurances that they did not collaborate with the Communist secret police, but extended the categories of people to whom it should apply. Just to remind our readers:

The new law drastically extends the dragnet of earlier legislation, which required some 30,000 lawmakers, government ministers and judges to make sworn declarations stating whether or not they collaborated with the communist-era secret police. The expanded measures oblige some 700,000 more Poles - academics, journalists, managers of state-owned firms, school principals, diplomats and lawyers - to file such affidavits or face the sack. They will be checked by the National Remembrance Institute (IPN), which earlier this month charged former Polish president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, with "communist crimes" for declaring martial law in 1981. Anyone found to have fudged the truth in their declaration is barred from their profession for 10 years. Failure to fill in a form could cost a refusenik their job.

“Refusenik” was the term applied to the Soviet Jews who had applied for visas to emigrate to Israel and had been refused. What goes around comes around. This seems to be the opinion of a few other people as well.

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries an article by its Berlin correspondent, which explains that one of the leading experts on Poland’s history, Professor Norman Davies (from experience I’d say he knows a good deal more about Poland than, say, Russia or, for that matter, the European Union), has lashed out against the new law.

Norman Davies, who wrote a best selling history of Europe and holds a honorary chair at the University of Krakow, is one of 700,000 people in Poland being targeted by a far-reaching new law aimed at uprooting communism's legacy in the country.

Like them he has been sent a questionnaire demanding to know the extent of any "co-operation" with Poland's communist regime, which fell in 1990. Those who fail to sign the document and return it within a month are to lose their posts, and banned from holding public office for 10 years.

Professor Davies’s attitude is quite robust:

Academics and journalists are in the firing line. This is nothing to do with winkling out collaborators. This is about showing loyalty to the Kaczynskis.

Professor Davies is not, by a long chalk, a conservative historian but he may remember Lord Acton’s famous dictum:

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Of course, the Kaczinskys do not have absolute power. Far from it. But they do seem to be somewhat intoxicated with the measure of it that they do have.

Meanwhile, there have been other high-level “refuseniks”. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland’s first democratic Prime Minister has refused to comply with the new vetting law, pointing out that he has, in the last decade, filed three declarations of that kind and had no intention of filing any more.

The most interesting case is that of Bronislaw Geremek, the man who ought to have been chosen to be the President of the European Parliament after the new countries’ members had taken their place.

Geremek is a noted historian and a founder of the Solidarity Movement. He was a member of the Polish Parliament after the fall of Communism and Foreign Minister from 1997 to 2000. He is now a Member of the European Parliament, elected on the Freedom Union (UW) ticket.

He is clearly worried that there is a certain retrograde possibility in this law:

A law like this reflects governance based on exploitation and the creation of conflicts. It instills a sense of unease among citizens and a feeling that they are completely dependent on those in power.

Opposition groups have asked the constitutional court to rule on the legislation and the court will start considering the issue next month. To some this may appear a little too late.

Meanwhile, there is the question of Bronislaw Geremek’s seat in the European Parliament. He may have been elected to it by the Polish people (or those of them who had bothered to vote and put a cross against his name) but the Polish government appears to think that he can be stripped of this position. On May 7 the Polish Electoral Commission will submit a motion to Marek Jurek, the Speaker of the Polish Lower House, asking him to act on the case. Jurek is hedging his bets at the moment and talking about asking for more legal expertise.

Of course, one could argue that people must obey the law and people in public position must show a good example. On the other hand, there is a long-standing political theory that says, oppressive and unjust laws can and should be opposed. That was what motivated Bronislaw Geremek in the past and motivates him now.

EU reactions have been slightly odd. The President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering said that he and the various political groups would do everything in their power to ensure that Geremek will keep his place. What that means in practical terms is unclear.

And in a rare criticism of a fellow EU member, France also came out in support of Geremek on Thursday. European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said in a statement she had telephoned Geremek to assure him of her "friendly support and solidarity." "A founder nation of the European Union and home to the European Parliament, France is particularly vigilant concerning the respect of the fundamental values on which European construction is based," Colonna said.

And we know how France managed to ensure that it is the home to the European Parliament for one week of the month. Still, the opportunity to have a go at a Polish government, any Polish government, must have seemed irresistible.

In the meantime, Poland is geared for its own Bronze Soldier saga, the Culture Minister having announced that it intends to take down the various Soviet era memorials including the Second World War ones. The only thing I find odd is that there are any memorials left to take down.

COMMENT THREAD

Merkel,+Kaczynski[i-Merkel,+Kaczynski]Two of the new member states of the European Union are in the news: Poland because of Chancellor Merkel's visit, which seems to have yielded some reward for her and because of a new piece of lustration legislation; and Hungary because there have been riots in Budapest again on a national holiday.

A long piece that tries to summarize most of what might be happening in those countries is here.

COMMENT THREAD

Zyta+Gilowska[i-Zyta+Gilowska]Back in the late nineties Bill Jamieson and I were almost the only people around who argued that enlargement to take in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe was not a very good idea for the applicant countries. There were plenty of people who whined about the effect enlargement of that kind might have on those who were already members but few agreed with us that the new ones would suffer.

Our argument was relatively straightforward. What the newly democratic countries needed and genuinely wanted was security through membership of NATO and economic growth encouraged by free-trade agreements with the rest of Europe.

What they did not need is the imposition of EU rules on fragile economies and political structures. That and having their agricultural goods priced out of the market by heavily subsidized Western ones would not produce economic development but high unemployment. And it has come to pass.

To be fair, the Poles seem to have wrecked their economy without bothering to put all of the acquis communautaire into place. As the International Herald Tribune points out:

Since 2003, Poland's jobless rate has fallen from 20.7 percent to 15 percent, but mainly due to more than one million people leaving to take up jobs in Britain, Ireland and other Western European countries.

Poland, a staunchly Catholic nation of 39 million people, still has miserably low wages across many sectors by European standards — even for doctors and scientists — and dilapidated roads, railways and houses.

Poland's per capita gross domestic product has risen slower than that of any other new EU member state between 2000-2006, according to a report by the Center of European Reform, a London-based think tank.

In other words, Poland needs a good deal of money from the rest of the European Union and does not hesitate to make its need known as we know from the negotiations, which ended in Britain losing part of the rebate.

Unfortunately, that is as far as Poland goes in acknowledging its membership of the European Union – rights but not duties, so to speak.

When the European Union reprimanded Poland over its bloated budget deficit at a meeting of finance ministers last week, Polish Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska was not there to listen to other EU countries chide her.

Her absence raised a few eyebrows but did not really come as a surprise.

Since being reappointed as finance minister last September, Gilowska has not turned up at a single ministerial meeting in Brussels, reflecting the go-it-alone attitude of the current conservative Polish government that threatens to drive Warsaw into isolation on issues ranging from the economy to the environment.

Mind you, as she is the fifth finance minister in 16 months, she may simply not know where she is supposed to be when.

According to the article “Brussels” is beginning to get impatient though whether it will introduce the ultimate sanction – a suspension of various structural funds – remains to be seen.

While, personally, I am delighted to have Polish workers over in Britain, I do appreciate that the country might want them back. As they all have ID cards, it ought not to be difficult to organize that. The only trouble is that a number of labour-intensive parts of the British economy, such as horticulture, vegetable and fruit growing and, of course, construction would not survive without them. So Poland’s future, complete with its historically normal attitude to other countries, remains somewhat uncertain.

COMMENT THREAD

Warsaw+SE02[i-Warsaw+SE02]Say what you will about the new intake but they are quick learners. Gone are those wonderful economic ideas they were going to bring into the EU to revive its somewhat sclerotic economies.

I am talking about Poland, which has, of course, had an election since then with the Law and Justice Party, headed by President Lech Kaczynski and his brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, coming to power and recently distributing as many ministerial positions as possible to their various buddies.

One of them, the Treasury Minister Wojciech Jasinski announced recently that the Warsaw stock exchange is to be privatized. Well, after a fashion. The government will retain 51 per cent of the shares and will subsidize its expansion into other countries in the region if it felt like taking over parts of any other stock exchange.

As the International Herald Tribune reported

In his speech Jasinski also outlined a plan by which the Polish government would back the Warsaw bourse's expansion outside Poland. The exchange has already expressed interest in buying stakes in markets in Bulgaria and Slovenia. Jasinski said that the Warsaw exchange could issue nonvoting shares to "acquire enough capital to purchase other European exchanges" and that any company that participated in the initial privatization would be compelled to purchase these nonvoting shares later.

This is rather an odd view of privatization and is not regarded with any favour by such institutions as the Wiener Börse.

That policy would run directly counter to efforts by Wiener Börse to nurture a network of Central and East European exchanges through cooperation agreements on things like financial data distribution and product development.

The Vienna exchange has also taken a direct stake in the Budapest exchange, and its co-chief executive, Michael Buhl, has said that it is interested in a similar arrangement with Warsaw "if we are welcomed as a strategic investor."

"We are in any case interested in a stake in the Warsaw exchange," Buhl said. "But we would under no circumstances take part in an unwanted takeover."

Jasinski dismissed the pretensions of the Austrian stock exchange as being of no significance. Austria’s population is only 8 million, while Poland’s is 38 million, he pronounced and any sale of the stock exchange should go the other way. This is an interesting view of economic development, not shared by all that many people. Presumably, using that argument, should Nasdaq be foolish enough to display an interest in the Warsaw stock exchange, its shares ought to be made available to the organization that is based in a country far larger than Poland.

Actually, according to Jasinski, foreigners will not be able to buy shares in the stock exchange when and if it is privatized.

Jasinski outlined

…a strategy by which the Polish government would sell some of its holdings to "Polish investors" in blocks of 5 percent to 10 percent, while retaining a 51 percent stake itself.

Warsaw, he said, also intended to introduce regulatory changes to prevent companies listed on the exchange from being taken over by foreign companies "to ensure that the stock exchange will retain its Polish character."

"A sale to foreign interests is out of the question," Jasinski said. "I think that such a sale could risk reducing the stock exchange to the subservient position of taking orders from one of the major European exchanges."

Surely not. Not Poland with all those people.

As it happens the Polish government may run into difficulties with the Commission over that, as restricting who shares go to in privatization along national lines is against EU rules, something that, it is assumed, Jasinski does not know.

So far the Commission seems not to have heard of this plan. Jasinski's own office is busy backpedaling:

"The advisors still need to prepare the company for privatization," Jasinski's spokeswoman, Agnieszka Dluska, said. "There is still much analysis to be done."

By which time there might be another government in the country.

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