While Jean-Marie Le Pen rails against the European Union in the West, Giertych and others are attacking from the East, trying to stop their countries’ push to join the Union by 2004. Most Westerners assume that everyone to the East is panting to join their club. But that’s not quite the case. A majority still supports membership, but the numbers are going down–in Poland, from 77 percent in 1994 to 55 percent today. Second thoughts are being felt elsewhere as well. Many Czechs are nervous that Sudeten Germans, expelled after World War II, may try to reclaim their old properties. Like their counterparts in Poland, Slovak and Hungarian farmers are growing angry at what they see as the grudging welcome they are being accorded by the EU, reflected in the fine print of the membership documents. Their chief concern: the Union’s insistence that new members should initially get only 25 percent of the subsidies that Western Europe’s vastly more prosperous farmers receive in France, Spain and Portugal. It will take 10 years of gradual increases until they will be entitled to the full amount–if the troubled program of agricultural subsidies lasts that long.
Many East Europeans see this as manifestly unfair, possibly to the point of rethinking their national options. No more than a quarter of Poles, Czechs and Slovaks believe they will enjoy equal status with the older members once they join the club. While the math is speculative and hotly disputed, there are growing worries that a country like Poland could end up paying more into the EU than it gets out of it. With 38 million people, about 20 percent of whom consider themselves farmers, Poland will be the Union’s biggest–and, possibly, most problematic–new member.
Which is why Le Pen’s stunning success in the first round of French elections had such resonance farther east. “The future belongs to patriotic, nationalist and anti-establishment groups,” says Giertych. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski puts it in different terms, warning of a wave of “anti-European” xenophobia sweeping across the Continent. But the debate has changed. “In the beginning, the supporters [of EU membership] talked about money and the opponents talked about ideas,” says University of Warsaw sociologist Tomasz Zukowski. “Now the supporters talk about European civilization and our common roots, while the opponents talk about money.”
The cultural issues haven’t disappeared, however. To the contrary, Radio Marija, a virulently right-wing Catholic radio station, constantly warns that EU membership will lead to a loss of Christian values and the spread of abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality. But leaders of the Polish Catholic Church have made common cause with the country’s leftist government in endorsing EU membership, undercutting their case. Cardinal Jozef Glemp has called EU membership “a historical necessity.” In a newspaper interview, he declared: “I understand Euro-skeptics… But I can’t accept arguments that could threaten to lead to the isolation of Poland.” Other church leaders have been openly critical of the League of Polish Families and other right-wing parties for claiming their programs represent the will of the faithful. To lessen fears about a loss of national identity, President Kwasniewski has called for a “Europe of the fatherlands” instead of a United States of Europe.
Both sides are gearing up for new battles in anticipation of a referendum late next year. Prime Minister Leszek Miller has pledged that his government will resign if Poles reject membership. Some pro-EU forces worry, however, that this could transform the referendum into a vote about the government’s performance during a period of rising discontent over an 18 percent unemployment rate and cutbacks in social services. Domestic politics could intrude elsewhere as well. If Slovakia’s notoriously authoritarian Vladimir Meciar should stage yet another comeback in Slovakia’s elections next September, the EU may have second thoughts about taking his country in.
But the urge to “rejoin” Europe was a powerful motivating factor in the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and it remains strong today–particularly among young people. And Poles of all ages are often more enthusiastic about joint European undertakings than their Western neighbors. Nearly two thirds of Poles express their willingness to embrace the euro and abandon the zloty, the national currency, which was widely discredited in the communist era. Despite the contentious negotiations on everything from farm subsidies to property rights and labor mobility, pro-EU forces remain convinced that Poland will gain far more than it will lose from membership, even if the EU’s byzantine financial arrangements are hard to explain. “You have to assume they want to have a prosperous member, not a poor one,” says Roza Thun, the chairman of the Polish Robert Schuman Foundation, which organizes pro-EU rallies and educational programs. “It’s not in their interest to ruin us.” But the Giertychs of the region are trying to convince their countrymen that’s exactly what their Western neighbors have in mind.
