Can Poland still ‘be Poland’ while remaining in the EU?
“Let Poland be Poland!” That was the call of American conservatives, four decades ago, when the Solidarity movement of labor leader Lech Walesa arose in the port city of Gdansk to demand their freedom of the Communist system imposed by the Soviet Union.
A decade later, Poland broke free, and later joined the European
Union and NATO.
The question today also has to do with issues of Polish identity and independence. Specifically, can Poland be Poland — and still remain in the EU?
In recent years, the ruling Law and Justice Party has revised its governmental structures. The judiciary has been brought under greater central supervision and control, and a disciplinary chamber has been empowered to remove judges.
Such action, says the EU Commission in Brussels, violates basic EU law, which applies to all member states and trumps national law.
Brussels wants the chamber abolished.
Moreover, on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and the media, the Polish government has taken stands more consistent with its Catholic traditions than with the agenda of a secularized Europe.
The same holds true for the Hungary of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Poland and Hungary are ostracized as “illiberal democracies.”
In this social-cultural-moral clash inside the EU, outsider Vladimir Putin comes down on the side of the traditionalists and nationalists in countries where Christianity retains a hold against secularism.
This weekend, Moscow released excerpts of Putin’s blistering attack on a woke West at last week’s gathering of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi:
“We’re surprised to see things happening in countries that see themselves as flagships of progress,” said Putin. “The struggle for equality and against discrimination turns into aggressive dogmatism verging on absurdity.”
In the clash between Poland and the EU, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged that a solution be found acceptable to both, rather than engaging in a long and bitter battle that leaves one side victorious and the other estranged.
Yet, today, Poland is being threatened with economic sanctions, including a possible withholding of annual EU stipends and money set aside for EU nations to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Membership in the EU is popular in Poland, and the government has not threatened a walkout, a “Polexit,” like the “Brexit” that British Tories voted for in 2016 and carried out.
Still, Brussels fears that successful Polish defiance of its demands could lead other EU nations to make demands, and the grand project of creating a European superstate, a One Europe whose member nations are accorded limited rights similar to those of the 50 states of the American Union, could collapse.
National governments receive from membership in the EU not only the benefits of open markets, free trade and travel from one nation to another, but also, for nations like Poland and others in eastern and southern Europe, annual transfer of wealth from the EU.
The questions raised by the Poles are fundamental: Which takes precedence, when they come into conflict, Poland’s constitution and Poland’s laws, or the laws of the European Union?
Conflict appears inevitable, and the Poles will ultimately have to decide whether their country and constitution transcend EU law, or the reverse is now true.