East Goes West: The EU and Poland
By Marek Jan Chodakiewicz
Posted: Tuesday, July 5, 2005
PAPERS & STUDIES
Publication Date: June 27, 2005
Research Professor of History Marek Chodakiewicz delivered the following paper at a Heritage Foundation conference on June 27, 2005:
There is a discernable difference in attitude toward the European Union between the elite and the people. The EU project is entirely elite driven. The people remain apathetic and reactive. After all, what is there to fight and die for in the EU? The Euro (ecu) fails to ignite the imagination.
In the new member states of the EU in central and eastern Europe there is an analogous synergy between elite and popular attitudes to the EU. The dominant elite tends to lean toward centralization, embracing etatism, if not outright socialism. As always, the people tend to accommodate the system. However, at least a part of the elite and some of the people are market oriented, in Poland in particular. And Poland is important because, as the largest and most populous player in East Central Europe, it is the regional trend-setter.
Poland’s Euro-Elite
Poland’s elite remains Euroenthusiastic. The Euroenthusiasts span the spectrum from the left to right. They support the EU but with less zeal than it was the case before the accession.
Generally speaking, the left is Europhoric. It is positively entranced by the opportunity to participate in yet another social engineering scheme on a gigantic scale. The leftists view the EU as a panacea for all ills. They cherish the prospect to crush nationalism once and for all as well as discard Western tradition as retrograde. They love the Brussels bureaucracy, in particular if they can find employment within its bowels. They also enjoy the prospects of cultural and social changes looming on the horizon, including the obligatory public celebration of homosexual preferences. These politicians also rejoice in the specter of allegedly endless subsidies from Brussels to be divvied up among their obedient constituents.
Among the leftists, the post-Communists are additionally enthused about subordinating Poland (and other ECE countries) to the EU because the membership guarantees them a virtual impunity for their past crimes. The EU likes to get worked up over General Augusto Pinochet, while it swoons over General Wojciech Jaruzelski. Further, the post-Communists see the EU as a dialectical fulfillment of the theory of convergence: Communism (thesis) and liberal democracy (anti-thesis) becoming one as the Eurocracy (synthesis). Last but not least, the post-Communists understand Brussels to be an avatar of Moscow, albeit a more benign one.
The EU expects obedience and awards the faithful handsomely: the post-Communist kleptocrats need not fear the Soviet wrath anymore and can enjoy Western standard of living which far surpasses anything that the Kremlin had enticed them with for half a century. As for the right-Euroenthusiasts, their support of the EU is rather tepid. In fact, they have always been Eurosceptic pragmatics. Radek Siokorski put it best: “Hold your nose and vote for the EU.” Conservatives like Sikorski opted for the EU because of their concern for Poland’s security. They viewed the EU extension as a logical step following the nation’s NATO membership. The conservatives also hoped that the EU would be a free market bonanza. Last but not least, the Polish conservatives were looking forward to associating with their European peers in a pro-American, Atlanticist foreign policy milieu that was firmly rooted in Western, Judeo-Christian tradition. They have been rather disappointed.
The Franco-German liberal leadership of the EU scorns the United States, preferring to cuddle China and Russia. The EU elite discarded the Judeo-Christian tradition long ago in
