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09.06.03, 08:02
The New York Times
Sponsored by Starbucks
June 9, 2003
Poles Vote Yes to Joining European Union
By PETER S. GREEN
WARSAW, June 8 2003 Bidding a final farewell to their country's Communist past, Polish voters overwhelmingly approved entry into the European Union today in a nationwide referendum, but a down-to-the-wire finish left many supporters of membership fearful until the final minutes that low turnout might make the referendum invalid.
The strong yes vote gives President Aleksander Kwasniewski popular approval to ratify Poland's accession treaty to the European Union, which was signed at a summit meeting in Athens in April. "We are returning to the great European family," Mr.
Kwasniewski (pronounced kvash-NYEFF-skee) said triumphantly on television. "We are returning to the place which Poles and Poland deserve in 1,000 years of history."
The approval by Poland, with 39 million people, was widely seen as the last remaining hurdle to plans to unite the former Soviet allies with the 15 Western members of the union. The expansion's architects hope to create a common market reaching from the
Atlantic to the border of Russia.
Surveys of voters leaving the polls showed that turnout in the two-day ballot crossed the necessary 50 percent threshold only an hour before polls closed. Preliminary results tonight show 78.02 percent of voters backed accession to the European Union
and 21.98 percent voted no, the State Election Commission announced just before midnight. It said the turnout reached 59.6 percent.
In the streets of Warsaw, Poles danced and celebrated.
"Yes!" screamed Marta Bockowska, 23, when asked if she was happy with the results. "I know that at first it will be really hard. The union will not be a paradise, but we can't forget we are squeezed between Germany and Russia."
On the steps of Warsaw's Great Theater, a choir sang Schiller's "Ode to Joy," from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the adopted anthem of the European Union.
In Brussels, the European Commission, the union's executive arm, hailed the Polish vote as "a turning point in European history."
Poland is one of eight former Communist countries, along with Malta and Cyprus, invited last December to join the European Union by May 2004. So far, seven candidates have held referendums, all affirming membership.
A feeble 17.3 percent of voters turned out on Saturday in the first day of balloting, but this evening brought a rush by many voters who had spent a balmy weekend in the countryside.
"It's not the last minute; We were away for the weekend," said Bogdan Kliment, a corporate executive, as he rushed to a polling station in Warsaw's Orsinow district an hour and 15 minutes before the polls closed.
"There is no other choice for Poland," he said. "It will mean better opportunities for our children, and the common economy is better for all of us." Despite a ban on campaigning during the vote, the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza published an extra edition
today with the headline "Twice as Many Must Go," encouraging voters to cast their ballots. Poland's 10 million cellphone users received messages reminding them how long they had left to vote, while museums and art galleries offered free admission to
keep city voters from missing voting by heading to the country, Reuters reported.
Political analysts credited Pope John Paul II with pushing the turnout above the 50 percent bar. Populist political parties and many priests in this strongly Roman Catholic and often deeply conservative country had urged parishioners to stay away from
the polls.
They feared the European Union's relaxed stance on abortion, gay rights, divorce and pre-marital sex would undermine Poland's national morality and see its national identity, only recently recovered from four decades of Soviet domination, dissolved in
the multi-ethnic union.
A pastoral letter from the pope, who was born in Poland, read in churches across the country last weekend called on Poles to cast their ballots for joining the union, and called Poland's planned membership "an act of historic justice."
"The voice of the pope was probably one of the major factors in the success" of the referendum, Marek Krol, editor of the weekly news magazine Wprost, said in an interview.
But Mr. Krol warned that Poland still faced major obstacles before it would be fully ready to join. The popularity of Prime Minister Leszek Miller has plunged below 18 percent, and his left-wing coalition government is plagued by dissent over economic
reform and political infighting, and recently lost its parliametnary majority.
On Monday, the government is to meet to discuss sweeping budget reforms that are expected to include speeding up privatization and cutting subsidies to mines, railroads and other money-losing state enterprises.
Danuta Huebner, the government's minister for European Integration, warned that the yes vote was only one step. "We have to be well prepared for membership, so there is still a lot of work ahead of us," she said.
Economists say that with an average income only 42 percent of the European Union average, Poland would not have been able to catch up to Western standards outside the bloc. Unemployment remains above 18 percent, and the economy is expected to grow at
only 2.5 to 2.7 percent this year, far below the government's expected 3.5 percent rate.
The leaders of Poland's two main populist parties, who vehemently opposed membership, accepted the legitimacy of the vote, but warned that adapting to the European Union would be difficult and costly for many.
Poland's two millon subsistance farmers, a strong political group, will face big changes, and most elderly people are expected to see their already small pensions shrink further.
Among the more curious sights of the referendum was the appearance of Poland's last Communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, 79, who told journalists after casting his ballot that if someone had predicted this would happen 20 years ago, "I would have
said that it is science fiction, the theater of the absurd."
"But that's it," he went on, "the beauty of life. Realities change, domestically, internationally, historically. It's a new reality and you have to take it into account. I took account of it by voting for Poland's entry into the E.U."
