CRITERIOS BASE PARA LA REDACCIÓN DE SU NORMATIVA

Poland was always in the vanguard among the post-Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, having been the first state in the region to emerge from Communism in 1989. Very early on in Poland, there was a determination to ‘return to Europe’ and reclaim Poland’s place as a major democracy at the heart of Europe. Engaging with the EU and aiming towards EU membership was thus a primary foreign policy goal (Vachudova, 2005: 78) that was accorded not only priority, but economic resources and political capital.

From the very beginning of the time period of study, Poland received assistance from the EU under the PHARE (Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring their Economies) programme. Poland then signed a Europe Agreement with the EU in December 1991 at the same time as Hungary and Czechoslovakia. This agreement covered trade relations and was intended to pave the way for membership. From this very early point in time, according to one interviewee, trade relations with the EU was one of the most important elements in Poland’s relationship with the EU, and the most important influence on Poland’s economy (Ambroziak, 2013). However, the bruising process of negotiating access to the EU’s markets served to demonstrate the weakness of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) states’ negotiating positions. It also served to strengthen the resolve of their leaders to secure a promise of full EU membership, and they called for a clear timetable and conditions by which this could happen in June 1993, just before the European Council’s Copenhagen summit (Vachudova, 2005: 90-95). This was clearly a key point in time for Poland, and the other CEE states, not least because of the Copenhagen Criteria which were developed for this summit.

Poland applied for EU membership in April 1994 and accession negotiations opened in March 1998. Poland also become a full member of NATO in March 1999. As a prospective EU candidate, Poland was subject to the EU’s accession conditionality with the incentive of EU membership, and which included the use of Regular Reports to monitor its progress from 1998 onwards. These reports, produced each year by the European Commission, became a huge focus of attention both on the part of the political elite and in terms of media coverage in the countries concerned. They did also

attract some criticism for being ‘ad hoc and inconsistent’ and for being used ‘less to promote EU norms and evaluate their implementation, but rather [as] more of a process-oriented process, that emphasized ‘progress’ at all costs.’ (Hughes & Sasse, 2003). Despite this, the importance of the Regular Reports in charting the democratic development of accession candidates was rapidly established. Table 2.1 below shows the result of a comparative analysis of the EU’s assessment of Poland in the Regular Reports from the beginning of the accession process in 1997 to the eve of accession in 2003.

Table 2.1: EU Regular Report assessments of Poland (1997-2003)

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Democracy and the Rule of Law

Parliament + + + + + + + + + +

Executive _{+ + + + + + + + + +}

Judicial system - - - + / - + / -

Anti-Corruption measures - - - - - - - - - + / - + / -

Human Rights and the Protection of Minorities

Civil and Political Rights + + + + + + + + + +

Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights + + + + + + +

Minority Rights & Protection of

Minorities + + + + + + +

+ Positive - Negative

++ Strongly positive - - Strongly negative

Source: Author’s own categorisation from European Commission Regular Reports

We can see that the EU’s assessment of Poland was overall favourable, but there were areas of concern in corruption and the judicial system. These scores only improved from 2002 onwards, and there was still concern about these areas on the eve of Poland’s accession to the EU. The accession negotiations themselves were long, difficult and very unequal (Judt, 2010: 721) due mainly to the huge bargaining power that the size of the EU’s economy compared to Poland’s gave the EU. Although public opinion was very aware of the potential benefits of EU membership, as the accession

process continued, people became more aware of the associated costs of the necessary reforms. Euroscepticism gained some electoral support, most notably through the League of Polish Families and Self-Defence parties (Szczerbiak, 2008: 225-228). However, the issue of EU membership was not really a major one in the presidential election of 2000 (Szczerbiak, 2001a: 8), and since Poland joined the EU, the impact of EU accession has had little significant direct impact on Polish party politics (Szczerbiak & Bil, 2008: 27). The referendum on Poland joining the EU took place in June 2003. Turnout was comfortably over the 50% required threshold at 58.85% and the ‘Yes’ campaign won an overwhelming victory with 77.45% to the ‘No’ campaign’s 22.54% (Szczerbiak, 2004b: 683-684). Poland joined the EU in 2004 as part of the biggest enlargement in the EU’s history when it expanded to include 10 new member states, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe. As such, Poland is a ‘new’ member state with relatively recent experience of the application of the EU’s accession conditionality approach.

Accession to the EU is not of course the end of the story in terms of democratic consolidation, despite its much coveted international status (Pridham, 2005: 228). Indeed, there is a general concern over issues of democracy in new EU member states and the ability of the EU to safeguard democracy in new members once they have joined and the leverage over their membership is gone. Specifically, there have been fears of a populist backlash once EU membership has been secured (Rupnik, 2007). This is relevant to this comparative study as developments in some of the CEE countries post-accession had an effect on EU enlargement policy as applied to cases that came later, as we will see in the case of Croatia. Issues that caused concern in Poland included proposed lustration (dealing with ex-Communists) laws, relatively high levels of homophobia compared to other EU member states, and concerns over the nature of small parties that are included in governing coalitions. In particular, the Polish government from 2005 to 2007 caused concern as it included the Law & Justice (PiS) Party in coalition with the populist Self-Defence (SRP) and the nationalist League of Polish Families (LPR). PiS based its success on a mix of ‘conservative Catholicism, nationalism, distrust of the uncontrolled free market, anti-corruption and strict lustration’ (Vermeersch, 2010: 512). PiS also had success in the Presidential election when its candidate Lech Kaczyński beat Donald Tusk in 2005.

The period from 2005 to 2007 was described by its political opponents as a ‘bizarre and frightening’ episode in Polish political history in which the PiS-led government engaged in fundamentalist right-wing policies whilst also alienating its international allies (Gebert, 2010: 156). Some observers watched with ‘dismay and disbelief’ as xenophobic and intolerant views came from the Polish government, through media outlets such as Radio Maryja (Pankowski, 2010: 2). However, defenders of Radio Maryja argued that it had been subject to a ‘smear campaign’ and that the freedom of speech that it represented, while it may be ‘risky’ and ‘dangerous’, was actually ‘an expression of the most complete form of democracy’ (Skubis, 2006).

It was however a strained time for Polish-EU relations, doing much to support the view of Poland as an ‘awkward’ EU member (Szczerbiak, 2011a). Leaked cables from the US Embassy in Warsaw from November 2006 show that they took the view that Poland was losing effectiveness in European institutions at this time due to President Kaczyński’s ‘disregard for the foreign policy establishment’ (WikiLeaks, 2011a). It is important to note however that this seeming consensus on the lack of democratic credentials of the 2005-07 government in Poland represents only one view, and there are counter arguments, even if these are not as often made. The use of this period as an example of democratic difficulties in existing ‘new’ member states of the EU may become less frequent as more examples occur of similar concerns in many other EU member states, and not just the ‘new’ ones.

In October 2007, the Civic Platform (PO) soundly defeated the Law & Justice Party, and the League of Polish Families and the Self-Defence lost all their seats and failed to cross the 5% electoral threshold. Donald Tusk from the PO became Prime Minister and brought with him a much more pro-European policy outlook and the intention for Poland to move towards joining the Euro. Poland’s economic credentials were boosted by being the only EU member state not to go into recession as a result of the worldwide credit crunch after 2008. Poland was the only EU country besides Cyprus that experienced positive GDP growth in 2009, due to ‘a happy confluence of relatively conservative bank practices, government fiscal policy, labour market segmentation, and widely followed personal consumption norms’; Poland thus avoided the worst effects of the economic crisis that hit Europe (Leven, 2010: 55). Unlike the other two case study countries in this project, at this point in time, Poland arguably reaped the

economic benefits from its EU membership, not least the financial assistance it had received from the EU over many years.