Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło wrote a curiously desperate letter of last resort to the European Union to prevent the re-election of her Eurocrat predecessor, Donald Tusk. She appealed to democracy and national sovereignty. This must have sounded like a joke to the Eurocratic team that decided whom to choose. But all was in vain. Poland alone cast the dissenting vote. Representatives of twenty-seven other EU countries voted for the reelection of Tusk.
Poland’s former liberal prime minister Donald Tusk of the Civic Platform (PO) party has just been reelected as the president of the European Council (EC). The election has occurred against the explicit wishes of Poland’s current populist government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS). On the one hand, Tusk’s victory has triggered much gloating in the Europhoric, globalist, and German circles. On the other hand, it has prompted confused fury and embarrassment in the Polish ruling circles.
The imbroglio occurred because the PiS profoundly misunderstands the nature not just of the European Council, but of the European Union itself. The Poles believe that the EU is “Europe of the motherlands,” or “Europe of nations,” as Charles de Gaulle christened it. Instead, it is a centralized superstate of the Eurocrats who increasingly speak German.
The idea of the “Europe of nations” stems from a sensible belief that democracy is a grassroots phenomenon which should impact the EU at every level. It reflects the will of the people in each country differently, accounting for their cultural, economic, social, and political varieties and quirks.