In autumn, Europe could be shaken by a violent earthquake. The epicenter could be Poland, where citizens will be called to vote. Assets informed about Polish affairs see the fault widening and a risk on the horizon Polexit, if in those elections the sovereigns of Law and Justice (PiS) who have governed the country for eighteen years, under the influence of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, win again. The arguments put together to draw this gloomy picture are numerous. Meanwhile, in recent times, the front of the conflict between the EU's community leaders and the Warsaw government has widened.
First there was the verdict of the European Court of Justice, which agreed with the Brussels Commission in its appeal against the judicial reform launched by the government in 2019, a reform that effectively undermines the independence of magistrates, dragging them under the power of the executive, through the strengthening of the local Supreme Court, of direct emanation of the government.
Then came the halt by the Commission itself to the law which set up a body that must investigate "on the influence of Russia in the life of the country"; a renamed law anti-Tusk, because it aims to prevent the former premier, and his party, Civic Platform (PO), now in opposition, from standing in the next elections. On the subject, Brussels immediately launched an infringement procedure because the text is more than suspicious given that it wants to examine Moscow's interference in the period 2007-2022, which coincides, coincidentally, with the years of Tusk's premiership (2007 /2015).
While waiting to understand what the Polish leaders will decide to answer, almost twenty years after Poland's entry into the EU (2004), it is legitimate to attempt to take stock of the experience: what has the country become after it dropped out of the orbit of the USSR, once this has imploded?
Poland is the EU country that receives the most funds and knows how to spend them well
Slightly larger than Italy, 312 million square kilometers against our 302, for 38 million inhabitants, younger than Italians in terms of average age, 41 years against our 48, Poland is the member state of the EU which makes the most use of Structural Funds, the main instrument of European investments to promote the growth of member countries: 106 billion euros in the 2014/2020 tranche, against the 44,8 assigned to Italy in the same period.
However, no euro was lost: the Poles were very good at taking advantage of the European opportunity.
The most attentive analysts believe that Poland's entry into the EU "has impressively accelerated the country's infrastructural consolidation, which, unlike other former communist countries in the area, has not been undermined by significant corruption and lack of transparency in procurement". Furthermore, entry into the EU “has also favored the economic transformation of the country which has opened up to foreign capital and has given the green light to a new Polish entrepreneurial class which in some cases has entered the single European market very effectively, borrowing its most virtuous practices”. Not only. But also from a financial point of view, "Poland has made a qualitative leap and today employs more than 100 people in the financial sector".
In short, “today's Poland no longer has degraded areas or pockets of poverty, and big cities, such as Warsaw (which has had an economic development like no other European city), Wroclaw, Poznan, Gdansk, Krakow they are fully part of the economic-cultural circle of Europe”. What went wrong then? Why is the anti-EU spirit so heated in those parts? It is the usual story, it happens everywhere: pieces of the country that feel excluded from the banquet and that run into the arms of politicians who have their own personal interest as their sole objective.
Poland: the economic transformation has brought prosperity to the country but has fueled social resentment
In the case of Poland, it all begins with the collapse of the USSR and then with the upheavals that upset the satellites of the former Soviet country. The transition from a planned to a market economy leaves thousands of victims on the ground, all cut off or painfully affected by the capitalist transformation. And as time goes by things improve for some, but not for all and that, especially in the rural areas of the country, we begin to confuse the malaise with Europe, and Brussels with the annihilation of the Polish peculiarity . Theme on which the sovereigns beat the bass drum while their political recipe follows the usual stereotypes: homophobia, aversion to immigration from Africa or the Middle East, fear of a multiracial society, attachment to traditional family models.
Post-communist Poland first resists, then gives in. The conservative and anti-European wave leaves traces: the level of democracy in society is being reduced. The site registers it V-Dem, which measures the index within the countries: if in 2015 Poland had 0,8, a figure similar to that of Italy or Germany, in 2021 it is 0,4, the same as Kenya. More time would be needed to start a generational change and to restore the balance in the country between the most backward and the most advanced parts: but will Poland have all this time? And the question brings us back to the Polexit danger: why would the risk of leaving the EU be more concrete if the PiS were to win again? Those who know well what is happening on the Polish stage and its main players believe that this government would rather give up the 36 billion Pnrr destined for Poland, still frozen in Brussels, rather than open up to European controls, because the current regime has already distorted the division of powers. For example, with regard to justice: the minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who is also the Attorney General, threatens or holds thousands of people in check, ordering searches and intimidating those who publicly express dissent. While the aforementioned anti-Tusk law brings to mind the communist period, when with the denunciation it was possible to accuse and arrest anyone.
Poland: the eternal duel between Tusk and Kaczynski
The Poles, however, are indomitable, the communists knew it (they were the first to rebel in Moscow in 1956) and the sovereignists know it. Just last week 500 took to the streets against the government, just as women, in the past months, had protested by the thousands against the restrictions on abortion (today it is only foreseen in cases of rape and serious dangers to life). But the squares are one thing and the ballot boxes another, we have learned that. The truth - analysts argue - is that the result of the vote will be judged more on the disaffection of the province towards kaczynski than on economic results. Perhaps clientelism, nepotism, belonging to the PiS clan, increasingly intrusive elements, will count more.
And then there is him, the candidate Tusk, the man who would like to bring Poland back into the European fold, without any delay. The fact is that he is not much loved: he is considered at home, especially by the poorest classes of the population, as the one who dragged them into the most brutal capitalism, depriving them of the little that communism offered them, erasing the security and social stability of the province deep. He is portrayed by those who chose PiS as the angry and heartless capitalist who sold his soul to the EU. Many argue that those who chose Kaczynski may not vote, but it is unlikely that Tusk will vote.
Yet the 66-year-old Polish "Donald" has a respectable political record.
Meanwhile he was born inside the bed of Solidarity, the Catholic and anti-communist trade union founded in 1980 following the strikes in the shipyards of Gdansk and led by Lech Walesa, and from which in truth both "catch-all" parties were born, the PO of Tusk and the PiS of Kaczynski. After the fall of communism, throughout the 2001s, Tusk experimented with and led parties in the liberal area which then led in XNUMX to the formation of the current Civic Platform (PO), of which he is still the president today. The Kaczynskis are his all-time adversaries, like two "families" in the same village.
In 2005 Tusk was defeated in the presidential elections by the twin of the current head of PiS, Lech, who died, in 2010, together with his wife and almost a hundred members of his government, in a strange plane crash of which the Russian secret services have been accused. In 2007, however, Tusk reappeared in the parliamentary elections and won them.
And here he was designated as premier leading his country for seven years (2007/2014), having won again in the 2011 elections. His national political career is intertwined with the European one: he was President of the European Council from 2014 until to 2019, then returning to his homeland to prepare to face Kaczynski again. “I have returned to defeat the evil caused to Poland,” he declared. While homecoming has not always brought good luck to European leaders, see the sunset of German Social Democrat Martin Schultz.
Tusk certainly appears to be an excellent candidate, even if some would have preferred his younger party colleague and mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, 51 years old, university professor, former minister for digitization in his government, the only one who, according to many, could have intercepted the votes of the disappointed "Pisini", given that he lost the presidential challenge with Duda by a few votes in 2020 By now, however, the choices have been made and the war in the Ukraine will take its toll. All observers argue that it will certainly not benefit the opposition.
Warsaw wants to become the hub of a new Europe
Polish civil society and the government itself have opened their doors to refugees without hesitation, offering them assistance of all kinds, from education to healthcare, granting subsidies. They have joined the one and a half million Ukrainians who keep the Polish economy going in crucial sectors such as transport, infrastructure works, more humble services, family assistance. All this while internationally Poland has become central since the vast majority of aid to Ukraine (military and humanitarian) passes through Polish territory. This prompts President Duda and Prime Minister Morawiecki to nurture the ambition of making Poland thehub of a new area (dominated by Warsaw) which includes Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Romania up to Croatia. In short, the large-scale rebirth of Poland's ambitions within the Trimarium, the Three Seas initiative, born in 2015 as an accelerator of infrastructure policies (transport, energy and digital highways) between the 12 countries of Central and Eastern Europe which are located between the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Adriatic Sea. The Three Seas indeed.
Today, in times of war, that initiative can acquire a value that goes beyond that of a simple economic incubator.
It is therefore legitimate to ask whether those 12 countries, which represent almost 30% of the EU territory and 25% of its population, to which Ukraine has been added as a guest in recent months, could not decide to represent alone the "new Europe”, the one that by interpreting democracy in a looser way (the Italian prime minister would say “younger”) would select its values by deleting the most difficult ones: freedom of speech, civil rights and tolerance before all others. Imagining a "new" Brussels where this "soft" democracy could be applied and spread throughout the community.
Of course, on the international front the enemy would remain Putin and his illiberal Russia, and in the background there would continue to be the Chinese danger. While the US would remain its tutelary deities, fortunately far away. Within the countries, however, it would be difficult to differentiate between the risks that an opponent of the Russian regime runs, and another who wants to express dissent to the Polish, Hungarian government or any of the EU countries. At this point, we are sure that we are talking about vote in Poland? Or is the earthquake we fear the one that can start next year from Strasbourg with the new European Parliament? The question is a must.
