What to expect from the new Polish government in the EU-Russia context

On October 25^th parliamentary elections were held in Poland that led to the victory of Kaczynski’s right-wing nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) over the outgoing pro-EU Civic Platform (CO), which has led the country for the last eight years. I am not going to talk about the reasons why CO is no longer convincing Polish citizens – as they are likely to concern domestic issues and the pressure put by the EU as to migration quotas. What I am going to focus on, instead, are the consequences of this change in leadership. What impact might this election have on Polish relations with the EU and on EU-Russia relationship?

 

Eurosceptic, anti-Russian, and anti-migration. This is how Law and Justice presented itself to Polish people. However, considering the current international scene and the migration crisis Europe is dealing with, such slogan may well be appealing, but this puts the country into a very difficult position with other EU member states, as well as the EU with Russia.

 

If on the one hand the party supports Poland’s EU membership, on the other hand it is firmly against further EU integration, which is – according to the party – eroding Polish state sovereignty and national identity, and rejects EU mainstream politics “driven” by Germany, including the ‘weak’ policy towards Russia. It is, however, difficult to imagine Poland taking on an adverse political approach towards the EU and reaching for itself more satisfactory results than the current ones now that Law and Justice party has won the parliamentary elections. Poland will probably be more active in speaking loud its interests and opinions, but would that make any concrete difference within the EU? It was already quite conservative before the last elections, so is it possible to achieve anything at all by being even “more conservatives” and “more anti-Russia”? I doubt. The difference I see is merely an internal issue within the EU. The Civic Platform party was more EU-oriented and accepted regulations and decisions, according to their binding force of course, adopted by EU institutions. On the contrary, PiS is less willing to do so. For instance, it has already stated on few occasions that it will not accept the immigration quotas decided by the EU in a spirit of solidarity among Member States. So, I think that this tendency of being more independent and protecting the national sovereignty will only slow down and put obstacles to the EU legislation process and to Poland’s relations with other Member States. But at the end of the day, PiS will have to comply with EU regulations and decisions otherwise Poland may end up incurring sanctions of the Court of Justice.

 

As far as Eastern Europe is concerned, Law and Justice advocates for a tougher policy towards Russia both from the EU and NATO. According to Aleks Szczerbiak, professor at the University of Sussex and expert on Polish politics, the party is likely to take measures to secure a greater military presence in the country, including permanently stationed US forces or military bases, and to provide military aid to Kiev within the framework of NATO alliance. Furthermore, Szczerbiak suggests that the party will try to engage to “play the regional leader and build a sort of political and military coalition of post-communist East-Central European states”[1]. Poland has already tried to play the regional leader role in the Visegrad Group and, since 2009, has committed the Group to work on the Eastern Partnership in order to bring Eastern European countries closer to the EU. Poland never hid its intensions to build stronger political and economic ties with Ukraine and lay the path towards a future EU membership of such countries. However, such negotiations had the negative effect of fostering political instability in such countries and eventually led to the Ukrainian crisis starting in late 2013. After the annexation of Crimea, Poland strongly supported the sanctions against Russia, even though it meant harming its own economy in the first place, and is still advocating for an even tougher approach.

 

I believe that the firm anti-Russian policy of the new Polish government will further harm the diplomatic and political relations between the EU and Russia as it would foment the Russian perception that the EU is russophobic and against it a priori. If other countries in Europe will take the same path as Poland – and actually there are other countries sharing the same security concerns – it would certainly lead to a further deterioration of the political relations with Russia, thus slowing the process towards a solution to the Ukrainian crisis. Not to mention that increasing the presence of NATO and US forces in Poland, as the party wishes, would for sure be read by Russia as a provocative measure in violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which prohibits the permanent deployment of “substantial” NATO troops in Central and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, I doubt the EU would let Poland act unilaterally on any issue it may regard Russia and therefore I share Szczerbiak’s view that Law and Justice “may be more Eurosceptic – and anti-Russian – in rhetoric than in practice”.