Polish Toledo

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Keeping Abreast of EU Summit

So much for the promise 'to die for' the square root method to balance voting power by member nations of the EU.

The Polish government is being feted at home after agreeing to a last minute compromise at a summit of European Union leaders on a new Constitution. Simultaneously, criticism of its negotiating style is growing abroad.

Remarks by Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski ahead of the summit that Poland would have a population of 66 million today rather than the current 38.5 million if it had not been for the war irritated EU leaders.

Germany's biggest selling tabloid, Bild, was critical of EU concessions to the Polish government. "Why is Poland getting extra wurst?" the paper asked.

Who really came out ahead depends on who you talk to.






At home in Poland a poll shows a majority of Poles got some good concessions. But, a sizable minority question success at the summit.

The right wing movement headed by former parliamentary speaker Marek Jurek, who left the ruling Law and Justice to set up his own party, has criticized the Polish performance at the Brussels EU summit.

Marek Jurek said that the main aim of the Polish government had not been achieved – and that is the introduction of the square root system of voting. Jurek also pointed that the compromise on ignoring the Christian values in the future European Treaty is a harmful decision. The late JPII wanted Poland to be the moral compass of Europe.

Jurek underlined that this important stand for Poland was not defended, and that is wrong both for the public opinion as well as in practical debates on social policies, education or family. Marek Jurek demanded that the Polish head of diplomacy presents a detailed report of the summit.



The right-wing Warsaw weekly magazine Wprost, which backs the conservative nationalist regime of the prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and his twin brother, the president, Lech Kaczynski, has the cover of its latest issue as a montage showing "a beaming chancellor Merkel as "Europe's stepmother" baring her breasts to nourish the infant Polish twins.

In an article in the magazine, a Polish government official reacted to the weekend summit in Brussels, at which Poland stood alone threatening to wreck a deal and won big concessions from Mrs Merkel, by arguing that Germany was treating its eastern neighbour "neo-colonially" and refusing to accept it as a European partner. He accused Mrs Merkel of "humiliating" Poland at the summit because she was "full of complexes herself".

In the run-up to last week's summit, the Polish prime minister stunned colleagues in Europe by seeking to parlay Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis into greater power in EU councils. Had it not been for the Nazi occupation and murder of six million Poles, half of them Jews, Poland would be much bigger and more powerful in the EU, he argued.

Mr Kaczynski lost, but got a new EU voting system postponed, guaranteeing that in crucial talks on EU budgets in 2013-14, Warsaw will be in a much more powerful position than it might have been.

But Mariusz Muszynski, the Polish ministry official who advises on relations with Germany, said in Wprost that Berlin still refused to treat Poland as "a partner" in Europe. Wprost, which has a circulation of 700,000, has often used graphics to provoke Germany. Its editor-in-chief, Stanislaw Janecki, defended the latest image. "We just wanted to have a bit of fun," he told Spiegel Online.

In the final analysis, the cover slams both Merkel and the Twins. Hey, it's the free press in an open marketplace of ideas. Crude, but free of censorship.

See also post below. And...

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