The offensive of Polish diplomacy. Will the new political situation play out well?
It has been a while since the Prime Minister and President spent this much time traveling abroad. Is there a plan behind the increased diplomatic activity? Is it just an inadvertent accumulation of long-planned meetings and an ad hoc search for allies in the face of the conflict with Belarus and Russia?
Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz
“In six days, I have visited 11 countries talking to over a dozen of the EU’s top leaders and politicians. The government of Law and Justice is doing everything to ensure the security of our eastern border, Poland as a whole, as well as the entire European Union”, the Prime Minister wrote on social media. Central European countries dominate the list of capitals visited, but Germany, France, and Great Britain are also present. At the same time, the President took part in the meetings of the heads of state of the V4 group in Budapest, visiting Slovakia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. He also appeared before the French Prime Minister, with a “working” visit to his counterpart in Paris. And if his plans have not changed, President Duda is in Qatar as you read these words.
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Ideological war
When asked about the conflict with the European Commission during a meeting in Budapest, President Duda described it as an “ideological war”. The fact that the suspension of funds from the Recovery Plan for Europe is not related to any specific reservations to the Polish Recovery Plan, but nor to the officially declared concern for the rule of law, but is in fact an attempt to overthrow the Polish government from outside, as was the case in Italy once, is spoken about widely by not only the politicians of Solidarity Poland, but increasingly senior PiS politicians as well – including the co-chairman of the former parliamentary PiS faction, Ryszard Legutko. The Commission’s latest move – a strange, unexpected letter formulating various accusations and conditions, evidently serving to prolong the course of the case – made plausible the reports of the German media, that the decision to “starve” the Polish and Hungarian governments had already been made and we will not receive funds from the common European debt.
It is worth recalling that the Italian operation (Berlusconi’s replacement with Maria Monti, who is completely slow towards the Eurocracy) was successful thanks to the financial maneuver, in which the EU institutions played a major role – certain details of this plot were revealed in his book, also discussed in Polish media, by the US Secretary of State at the time, Timothy Geithner. It can be presumed that the current problems of Poland with inflation, combined with the struggles on the eastern border, which are costly for our country, were perceived in Brussels as a unique opportunity to repeat that success to some extent. Hence, contrary to the recently articulated expectations of the rulers, increasing pressure on Poland defending the “eastern border of the Union” and refusing any financial support for our activities, except for potential support for “humanitarian actions” concerning the migrants sent by the eastern regimes. There have even been voices that the policy of European financial institutions is designed to intentionally increase the inflationary impulses in Central Europe: considering Geithner’s reflections, they cannot be dismissed up front as “conspiracy theories”.
However, the statements of the president and other PiS politicians quoted above give rise to cautious optimism. It seems that in the spheres of influence there has been a realization that a battle with Eurocrats is inevitable and that the country needs to prepare to respond to a brutal attack in a more decisive manner than before. There are several options on the table: the strongest of them is a copy of the principle once applied by Margaret Thatcher “until we solve the problem, we veto everything” and the exit from the Next Generation EU fund, which creates a mechanism of common European debt – from which, it turns out, we will not receive anything, but will be forced to pay it back one day.
Of course, when undertaking such actions, allies must be found – and let’s hope that the activity of the Prime Minister and President in the foreign sphere serves this purpose more than gaining support for our efforts to defend the border, which by nature is rather symbolic.
To all the disturbing signs that were brought by the end of the year in European politics, one should also add the creation of a new government in Germany – a government whose coalition agreement included very clearly formulated announcements of support for the process of building a federal, EU superstate at the expense of the sovereignty of the member states that still remains, and increasing pressure on other European countries to submit to economic restrictions that are favorable to Germany and which “save the climate”. Both, after purification from the icing of propaganda and euphemisms, mean that German penance has ended and the country is now completely returning to the ambition to dominate Europe – according to the old Bismarck concept, based on an alliance with Russia.
Against German hegemony
Such a reality cannot be supported either by the countries in our region or France, relegated to the role of a junior partner of Germany. From our point of view, the French awakening regarding nuclear energy is of particular importance here. German policy, executed through the hands of Eurocracy and “useful idiots” concerned by the “climate catastrophe”, has set one of its main goals for the complete elimination of nuclear energy from Europe – even though it is the only way to obtain energy without combustion, completely without CO2 emissions, and the only possibility of obtaining massively “green” hydrogen. There is no possibility, however, that Germany will ever become a European hegemon, controlling the flow of imported fuel for nuclear power plants to Europe, but “saving the planet” with Russian gas enables it to reach the position of a dominant power on the continent. By the way, nowhere else do the cynicism and hypocrisy of “fighting global warming” emerge as forcefully as in this case.
In any case, President Macron, who for years had passively watched the collapse of French nuclear energy and the elimination of atomic energy from “ecological” sources of energy in European regulations, was forced to change his policy – partly because all his competitors in the upcoming presidential elections elevated the issue to the level of a key campaign topic. Most of them are also making rather strong pro-Polish declarations. Let us not be delusional that this is coming from a tide of love for Poland and Poles in France, but rather the awareness that one has to oppose German hegemony, and Poland is an important ally in this matter for a declining France. Moreover, the awareness that Germany draws strength from its alliance with Putin, despite its unpredictability, begins to somewhat blunt the thoughtless pro-Russian attitude of potential Eurosceptic coalition partners of PiS in EU policy – one of the main obstacles in the established cooperation.
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This article was published in December 2021 in “Do Rzeczy” magazine.
