It’s no joke to ask how many Poles it takes to stop Germany from
muscling through a new European Union “reform” treaty — a stopgap
measure in place of the EU’s unsuccessful attempt at a
constitutional accord. The answer is it takes only two, the twin
brothers Kaczynski who are president and prime minister of
Poland.
This year Germany occupies the rotating EU presidency, and its
chancellor, Angela Merkel, wants to leave both her personal and
national mark on the contemporary structure of Europe. The treaty
under negotiation last week at the EU summit was hoped to make the
union more effective externally as an international body and
internally as a disciplined institution of 27 members.
The whole process came to a standstill when the twin Polish
leaders, Lech and Jaroslaw, president and prime minister,
respectively, adamantly refused to go along with the German plan of
a population-based voting formula. For the Kaczynskis — and it all
did come down to something that personal — Poland would be cheated
of its rightful representation by the fact that so many Poles had
been killed by the Nazis during World War II.
Depending on one’s point of view, the Polish position was either
a futile exercise in ancient history or a serious issue of
recognition of a nation’s grievous loss of millions of innocent
civilians. But for the Poles it was also something else: a chance
to curb the German tendency to seek domination.
For her part Angela Merkel had reached the point on the night of
Friday, June 22, where she indicated she would go ahead with the
treaty without Polish agreement. This brought Tony Blair and
Nicolas Sarkozy to the forefront of the battle in the early hours
of the next day.
Joined by the clever, veteran statesman Jean-Claude Juncker, the
prime minister of tiny Luxembourg, the Englishman and Frenchman
double and triple-teamed the hard swinging Lech Kaczynski who
finally consented to get on the phone to his brother Jaroslaw. Back
and forth it went in one of those ever-complicated group conference
calls.
At some point it was reported that the twins used some choice
Polish language to describe what they considered German attempts to
get them to “surrender.” That’s not a term Poles like to hear or
think they hear. Eventually, though, the argument came down to
forcing a delay in the operational application of the new voting
system for ten years.
It had been bloody, but the Poles won on both moral and
practical grounds as presumably they did some quick calculations of
comparative birth rates. The one thing that was clear was that in
the final analysis it was individual European leaders arguing into
the wee hours in Brussels that contrived a settlement.
The public thinks of negotiations such as this as decorous
affairs with quiet deals made in pleasant surroundings by
intelligent and patient professionals. Well, deals were made and
most of the participants were quite smart, but the atmosphere
during this gathering was hardly decorous.
There was shouting and swearing, threats and gestures, and just
about anything and everything one can think of. At one point
Chancellor Merkel had to suspend the meeting just to settle things
down. In the end, however, the EU ended up with some positive steps
through its “reform” treaty.
The European Union would now have a full time president; a new
“high representative” for foreign and security affairs (in place of
the unacceptable title of foreign minister); a European diplomatic
service; fewer national vetoes; a double majority voting system
wherein 55% of nations representing 65% of total population would
carry legislation. And important in terms of international prestige
there will be a strong legal status for representation as a body in
multilateral councils.
Essential for Warsaw, however, was the fact that it showed the
rest of Europe there was no room for Polish small boy jokes
anymore. The twins are happy. They know that besides the Germans in
the EU, the Russians were watching from the outside. Poles have
very long memories.
