By James West
Poland has been staking a claim to its identity as an sovereign nation since the election of its current government in 2015. This is a dangerous game of chicken, and as of yet they have not wavered in their challenges to the European Union. The battle is with Germany, the de facto head of the EU, over the consequences of Poland’s refusal to accept any refugees during the EU’s relocation program.
This controversy all began with the resettlement plan for the refugee crisis in Europe, which Poland initially, albeit hesitantly, agreed to comply with. In 2015, the Civic Platform was the ruling party and was willing to compromise with the EU. As polling at the time showed, however, 69% of the Polish populace disagreed with letting in non-white migrants, and Civic Platform’s attempts to balance the will of its electorate with the demands of EU bureaucrats cost it the upcoming election. In late 2015, the Law and Justice (PiS) Party won the parliamentary elections. Despite an initial ambiguity on whether they would uphold the commitment of the previous leadership to take in refugees, the terror attacks in Paris, which followed within a month of their victory, solidified Poland’s new stance: no refugees would be allowed. In fact, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Witold Waszczykowski, actually suggested giving military training to Syrian refugees, then sending them back to liberate their home country themselves.
Poland’s position reflected that of the other members of the Visegrád group – the political alliance of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary – but particularly the latter. Critics claimed hypocrisy on the Poland’s part, which refused to take in migrants while simultaneously experiencing a high level of emigration to other countries because of its poor economic conditions, including 800,000 Poles currently living in the United Kingdom. Another criticism of Poland’s government is that it is giving in to the pressure of far-right groups such as the National Movement and the National Radical Camp, which organized anti-refugee marches that specifically opposed non-white and non-Christian migrants. In response to these criticisms, the Polish government cited the dangers of communicable diseases, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, and the economic conditions of Poland itself as the reasons for their position. The main problem, at least as pronounced by the Law and Justice party, is the lack of a security mechanism to ensure the safety of Poland’s citizens when bringing in migrants.
Spurning the requirements of the EU to take in a quota of refugees did not go unnoticed, however. The European Commission proposed a forced payment of €250,000 ($290,000) per refused refugee, which would translate to over €1 billion ($1.1 billion) for Poland. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the Law and Justice Party, responded by saying, “Such a decision would abolish the sovereignty of EU member states – of course, the weaker ones. We don’t agree to that, we have to oppose that, because we are and we will be in charge in our own country.” Poland’s Prime Minister, Beata Szydło, argued that there was no legal obligation from the EU to take in refugees because both Hungary and Poland voted against the quotas in the first place. Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto also referred to the proposal as “blackmail”. The EU responded to these remarks by escalating the threat from payments per rejected refugee to total economic sanctions against Poland if it failed to begin accepting migrants by June of 2018. Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, however, retorted that accepting migrants would have “certainly been worse for Poland” than sanctions, indicating the nation’s continuing stance against taking in refugees.
Poland was unwilling to let the EU have the last word when it came to threats, however. In the last few months, Poland’s tactic has switched to demanding WWII reparations from Germany. In context, this may be just a strategic move against Germany, as the de facto head of the EU, to shift the conversation away from sanctions against Poland. However, there is a strong case here for reparations. The reason that Poland has not received much money from Germany is a 1953 declaration which waived any further responsibility of the German government to pay reparations to Poland. However, as the current government argues, that declaration was issued while Poland was a puppet-state of the Soviet Union, and thus is not valid for the modern, independent Poland. As one PiS lawmaker noted, “If Jews have gotten compensation – and rightly so – for loss of property, why shouldn’t we too make claims?” Estimates of the damages suffered by Poland amount to around $640 billion, and Germany has only paid $89 billion in total reparations to all groups wronged during WWII.
As might be expected, Germany is not particularly welcoming to these claims. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier agreed to meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda to discuss reparations, but the German Ambassador to Poland stated that while Germany admits moral, political, and financial responsibility, the issue is already formally and politically closed. The dialogue between Germany and Poland is still developing, but the latest news shows Poland accusing Germany of political interference after German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen called for “healthy democratic resistance of the young generation”. Poland views this as explicit interference in their judiciary reforms, which would allow the current government to select the top national judges, while Germany claims this comment was taken out of context.
Poland is staking a claim to its identity as an independent nation. Unlike Britain, this does not involve an explicit self-removal from the European Union. However, Poland’s time under authoritarian rule as a satellite state of the Soviet Union remains in recent memory, and it is not willing to submit to another new multinational union’s demands without a fight. What the European Union does not fully understand yet is that its usual tactics of economic threats against non-compliant countries are falling on deaf ears in this case. Polish politics is transcending economics for nationalist identity. Blaszczak exemplified this when he said that taking in migrants would be worse for Poland than economic sanctions. Polish politics is operating on a different plane than that of the EU, and this means it is willing to make economic sacrifices for the sake of its people. The European Union will not succeed in bullying Poland into accepting refugees so long as it only makes threats against Poland’s wallet.