EUROPE'S AMERICANS:

Pushy Poland poised to join wary EU (Gareth Harding, 5/1/2004, UPI)

"Extremely stubborn," "very aggressive," "difficult to deal with," "major laggards," "the ones who will argue most" -- and those are just some of the nicer things anonymous European Commission officials say about Poles as they prepare for membership of the European Union on May 1.

"They adore confrontation," said Eneko Landaburu, head of the commission's enlargement service between 1999 and 2003. "Even if they are working on a crazy basis, if they get hit on the head, they don't give a damn, they keep going. That's their way of doing things."

It's easy to see why Landaburu and other senior EU officials are nervous about Poland's imminent entry into the Union.

For a start, Poland is big. With 38 million people, it has as many inhabitants as the other nine EU newcomers combined and will become the sixth-largest member state of the EU's 25. Its economy is also by far the grandest in the former Eastern bloc, with a gross domestic product of almost $200 billion.

At the same time, it is one of the poorest countries waiting on the EU's doorstep in terms of wealth per inhabitant. At 41 percent of the Union's average, per capita GDP is the lowest of the 10 new members -- bar the three former Soviet Baltic states. Unemployment is the highest in the enlarged Europe, with more than one in five people out of work, and 20 percent of the population work on mostly small, inefficient farms. A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated it would take Poland almost 60 years to reach the per capita GDP of the EU's current members.

But it is not Poland's wealth -- or lack of it -- that causes Eurocrats sleepless nights. Rather it is the government's negotiating style, which some liken to a bull in a china shop. At a December 2002 summit in Copenhagen that gave the green light to the Union's biggest-ever enlargement, Polish Premier Leszek Miller exasperated EU leaders by holding out until the last minute for extra cash and concessions. [...]

The staunchly Catholic country, which was the first Eastern bloc state to shrug off communism in June 1989, is likely to side with France and Spain on farm aid and regional subsidies, Britain on many economic issues, and other new members in its unswerving support for NATO and the United States.

Poland backed the U.S-led invasion of Iraq and signed an open letter of support for the war along with seven other future members -- a move which infuriated France, Germany and other anti-war states. "They missed a good opportunity to shut up," railed French President Jacques Chirac, accusing the newcomers of being "badly brought up."

This kind of talk scares the living daylights out of Poles, who saw their 1,000-year old country wiped off the map in the 19th century, razed by the Nazis during World War II, and dominated by the Soviet Union for much of the post-war period.

"Centuries of history have taught us that security comes from the West and danger from the East," said Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a former Europe minister. "So asking us to choose between the European Union and NATO is like asking us 'Who do you love more, your dad or your mum?'"

Poland's commitment to NATO, which it joined in 1999 together with Hungary and the Czech Republic, is rock-solid. But its enthusiasm for the EU has been dented by long and torturous membership negotiations that have effectively left its proud and patriotic citizens with second-class status within the bloc.

For the first seven years of EU membership, Poles will be unable to live and work freely in most member states, farmers will receive only a quarter of the agricultural subsidies Western colleagues get, and Poles stand to receive less than $80 per head from Brussels -- a paltry figure compared to the $500 every Irish man and woman pocketed in 2000.

Populist groupings like Andrzej Lepper's anti-EU Self-Defense party have ridden the growing wave of euroskepticism and seen their support surge to over 10 percent. Meanwhile, Miller -- a former communist apparatchik turned social democrat -- has watched approval ratings plummet and will spend his last full day in power on May 1 before handing over to incoming premier Marek Belka.

Poland's problem, from a European perspective, is that it's too much like America. Indeed, it should secure its future by entering into a pact with us and bypassing the EU.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2004 9:28 AM