Those pesky Poles

[Gość: Polack]

Charlemagne

Those pesky Poles

Nov 27th 2003
From The Economist print edition


In which old members offer new ones some lessons in negotiation

SELFISH, greedy, nationalistic, unEuropean. Not France or Germany, you
understand, which have just upset the European Commission and many smaller
countries by riding roughshod over the euro's stability pact. No, these
insults are being heaped on the poor Poles, as the tortuous negotiations over
a new constitution for the European Union lurch towards a conclusion. What
have the Poles done to deserve such odium?

The problem is that they are fighting like alley cats for what they see as
their national interests. Siren voices in Brussels, Paris and Berlin are
warning the Polish government that it is making a terrible mistake. It is a
newcomer to the club and has failed to understand its essential feature:
the “culture of compromise”. All countries must occasionally sacrifice their
national interests to serve the greater European cause. Poland must realise
this great truth and buckle under, before it harms both the EU and itself.

The biggest issue causing grief is the proposal in the draft constitution to
adopt a new voting system. Under the putative “double majority”, a law would
be passed if it won the support of a majority of EU countries, representing
60% of the total population. This would replace the system agreed upon at a
summit in Nice in December 2000, in which countries were awarded “weighted
votes”. Under the Nice formula, Germany, with a population of over 80m, gets
29 votes, the same number as France, Britain and Italy, each of which has a
population of roughly 60m. Poland and Spain, with populations of some 40m
each, get 27 votes apiece. In their more candid moments, even the Poles
recognise that this system is bizarrely advantageous to them. As a Polish
minister once confided to your correspondent, “We have a population half the
size of Germany's and an economy about a tenth the size, and yet we get 27
votes to their 29. We would be crazy to turn down a deal like that.”

The EU was certainly crazy to offer a deal like that. That it came up with
such a strange voting system was the result of the politics and panic of the
moment. Double majority was proposed at Nice, but France, which held the EU
presidency at that time, refused to accept the system because it gave Germany
relatively more power. The Poles, who were not even at the table in Nice,
were the happy beneficiaries of a combination of French intransigence and
Spanish negotiating skills.

There is no doubt that “double majority” is more democratic and more
comprehensible than the Nice formula. But the Poles have respectable
arguments for sticking to their position. The Polish people have just voted
to join the EU in a referendum, based on the terms offered to them at Nice.
Now, after the vote, and just a few months before Poland's formal entry next
May, the EU is belatedly trying to retract its offer. The switch to double
majority was proposed by the Convention on the Future of Europe in June,
which claimed to be an open and democratic exercise. But the new voting
system was decided upon at the last minute by the convention's presidium
(steering committee), on which there was no Polish representative. Even at
the time, the Poles and the Spanish made it clear they did not accept the
idea.



Dogs in mangers
But, beyond the negotiating intricacies, don't the Poles have a moral
obligation to accept that Nice is plain silly and that double majority would
be better? Surely the EU should be about more than “what we have, we hold”?
In an ideal world, undoubtedly. But all the huffing by current members of the
EU about the need to think of the “European interest” would be more
convincing if they were to apply the same principle to themselves. Where is
the European interest in the Franco-German decision to trash the stability
pact, simply because the French and Germans cannot control their budget
deficits? Where is the European interest in France's dogged defence of the
wasteful and protectionist common agricultural policy, which just happens to
shovel huge wads of cash to French farmers? Where is the European interest in
Britain's insistence on keeping its budget rebate, no matter what? Or in
Spain's relentless determination to cling on to a disproportionate share of
EU regional aid?

The Poles, however, are newcomers, and relatively poor at that. As a result,
they seem to be expected to mind their manners and just be grateful for all
the EU money that will soon head their way. Even when current members try to
sound sympathetic, their attitude is deeply condescending. Viscount Etienne
Davignon, a Belgian former vice-president of the European Commission, and the
epitome of the EU's great and good, says: “We have to remember that the Poles
have only recently regained their national sovereignty and are new to the
European Union. It takes many years of membership before people really
understand how Europe works.” The notion that the Poles and the other seven
central European countries that are joining next year (along with Malta and
Cyprus) might just possibly have ideas that are as valid as those of the
six “founder members” is apparently too fanciful to contemplate.

The fact is that the entry of Poland into the EU is profoundly unsettling to
traditionalists. European integration began with Franco-German reconciliation
after the second world war. The EU's main institutions are still strung out
along the Franco-German borderlands, in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.
For French and German politicians, it is axiomatic that their relationship
should remain the fulcrum around which the EU revolves. But enlargement will
shift the centre of gravity. The decision of the Poles (and most other
central Europeans) to take a pro-American line over Iraq went down
particularly badly in France, prompting Jacques Chirac's now infamous remark
that the newcomers had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”. Now that the
constitutional negotiations are reaching a crunch, the Poles are again being
invited to “shut up”. So far, they have declined the invitation. How very
shocking.