journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

7
Poland’s Road to the European Union
Ania Krok-Paszkowska and Jan Zielonka
This article examines Poland’s developing attitudes and policies towards the EEC/
EU from the 1960s onwards. Within this approach we will make reference to the
available literature and to the accessible documents. Our article starts with a short
historical outline that sets out Poland’s European credentials and that tries to give
some insights into the Poles’ attitudes towards Europe and their role therein.
Poland has consciously brought its own historical experiences to the negotiating
table. This section is followed by an outline of the EEC-CMEA (Council for
Mutual Economic Assistance) relations in the late 1970s and Poland’s role therein,
which shows the practical limit of its relations with the EEC/EC during the cold
war period. We then examine how the debate on “Europeanization” has shifted
from the early 1990s to the present day and review the arguments of
Euro-enthusiasts and Euro-sceptics. We go on to describe and analyse how Poland
has dealt with accession negotiations in the light of its role as the largest and most
strategically crucial candidate. In this section we point to Poland’s role in Europe
and its special relations with Germany and the United States (US). The final section
deals with Poland as a new EU member state and discusses what kind of EU policy
one may expect from Poland on the basis of the historical record.
Historical Associations
For Poland’s political elite, joining the EU is primarily about returning to Europe.
Since the tenth century, the myth of Poland’s state and nation (under the first
“Polish” King Mieszko I) has dominated the Polish discourse on Europe, and the
adoption of Christianity from Rome in 966 is the symbol of Poland’s long-standing
“Europeanness”. During this period of ten centuries there are many historic events
symbolising Poland’s European credentials: the Union of Lublin in 1569 setting up
a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, King
Sobieski’s victory over the Turks near Vienna in 1683, the first written European
democratic constitution of 3 May 1791, the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the
Gdańsk Agreement in 1980 leading to Solidarność. 1 Many such events are referred
to in the present discourse on Poland’s role in the European Union.
1. See especially N. DAVIES, Heart of Europe: the Past in Poland's Present, Oxford University
Press, Oxford/New York, 2001. See also N. DAVIES, God’s Playground: a History of Poland in
two volumes, Clarendon, Oxford, 1981; K. GERNER, Piast, Jagiełło or Jadwiga? Poland and
Europe at the End of the 20 th Century, Working Papers 42, Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala, 1998; J.
JEDLICKI, A Suburb of Europe: Nineteenth-century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization,
Central European University Press, Budapest/New York, 1999.