Polish politician Jarosław Kaczyński and German chancellor don’t always see eye-to-eye on EU matters. (Bartosz Bobkowski / Agencja Gazeta)
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s governing party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice), is now as important figure in European politics as French president François Hollande.
No one should be surprised that Kaczyński is now the de facto leader of Poland, and no one should have doubted that he would direct a PiS-led government to pursue its full-throated agenda of populist economic sops to Poland’s poorest easterners and socially conservative values, mixed with equal amounts of nativism, euroscepticism and paranoia.
But Poland’s fresh government is facing criticism at home and abroad that it is now dismantling many of the features of the country’s post-Cold War democracy. Notably, critics argue that the new PiS government is co-opting both Poland’s constitutional tribunal and its state-run media.
Andrzej Duda, Poland’s new president has refused to seat five judges appointed by the outgoing government to Poland’s constitutional tribunal. Though two of those judicial appointments were subsequently ruled invalid, the new PiS government pushed forward with five new appointments anyway, leaving three judges validly appointed and unconfirmed. Moreover, the new PiS government passed a law mandating a two-thirds majority (not a simple majority) for constitutional rulings. The new government has also asserted greater political power over the state-controlled media.
Barely three months into Poland’s new government, the European Commission is opening a formal inquiry against the PiS-led administration, headed by EC first vice president Frans Timmermans, to determine whether the new government’s actions amount to a ‘systemic risk’ to Poland’s rule of law, a standard that — so far — hasn’t been breached in Hungary or Romania.
Those concerns are legitimate, especially insofar as the new government is undermining judicial independence and press freedom, and some Europeans hopes that US president Barack Obama will even exert pressure, through the NATO alliance, on Poland’s new government. But the overwrought response from EU elites will only play into the hands of the PiS’s most eurosceptic leaders and, what’s more, Polish democracy is far too developed in the year 2016 to crumble as easily as many of Kaczyński’s critics fear.
Throughout the European Union, the Greek economic crisis and lingering problems with the eurozone have undermined the monetary pillar of EU integration, while the deluge of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and elsewhere, in greater numbers than at any time since World War II, have eroded the Schengen zone and the principle of internal European borders. EU leaders have far greater problems than allowing Kaczyński and the PiS into goading them into confrontation, especially as British voters focus on a 2017 referendum that could result in the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. Continue reading Give PiS a chance: why the EU has to play nice with Poland’s new populist government→
The vital question for Poland’s new government is whether it will be led by the new prime minister, Beata Szydło, or by the longtime PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński. (Facebook)
In a sweeping election, the nationalist conservative Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) will return to power after eight years in the wilderness, bringing the prickly former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński back to the heart of Polish and European governance, according to exit polls pending the release of full election results on Monday.
Though Kaczyński himself didn’t stand for prime minister, he hand-picked the PiS’s prime ministerial candidate, 52-year old Beata Szydło, a more moderate figure who worked throughout the campaign to assure voters that the PiS could form a more constructive government than the one Kaczyński led between 2005 and 2007, when his late twin brother Lech Kaczyński simultaneously served as Poland’s president.
The PiS’s presidential candidate, Andrzej Duda, a 42-year-old member of the European parliament, won an upset victory in May’s presidential election. A nationalist who opposes Poland’s entry into the eurozone, Duda (like Szydło) nevertheless portrayed a more moderate quantity than Kaczyński.
Though Kaczyński hasn’t particularly undermined Duda (so far), the presidency is a far more ceremonial office than the premiership, so it’s reasonable to believe that Kaczyński will play a much more hands-on role in the next government, if behind the scenes. That means that most important question that the new government faces is whether it will embrace the more moderate Duda-Szydło approach or revert to Kaczyński’s more pugilistic and confrontational manner. (A close second is the degree to which the next government will embrace economic liberalism, given the PiS’s penchant for populism).
The election results amount to a repudiation of Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister appointed last year as president of the European Council. Tusk hasn’t made the easiest transition from Warsaw to Brussels. Part of the reason is that he has spent so much effort trying to continue to shape Polish politics through his hand-picked successor, Ewa Kopacz, who didn’t share Tusk’s immense charisma or gravitas. His party, the more liberal, center-right Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform), had trailed consistently since the May presidential election, despite one of the best economic records in Europe. GDP growth since the 2008-09 financial crisis is the highest in Europe, and the country actually avoided recession throughout the past eight years.
Even with Tusk at the helm, a third consecutive mandate would have been difficult. Voters voiced growing concerns over a wire-tapping scandal and exasperation with the unequal pace of economic development. Civic Platform also faced the general sense of fatigue that comes after two full four-year terms in office. Moreover, fears over border security and the European refugee crisis this autumn also played to the PiS’s more nationalist strengths.
Headlines and commentary suggest that the new Polish government will look like Viktor Orbán’s hard-right, nationalist government in Hungary, but that somewhat overstates the case. Though the PiS will echo Orbán’s line on migration and border security (essentially the same position as Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico), Orbán has expressly taunted European values and embraced the concept of an ‘iliberal’ Hungary. No one expects Poland to follow suit.
Nevertheless, the new government will be even more hawkish in pushing for European (and NATO) vigilance against Russia, and the PiS will push for Poland to take a leading role throughout eastern and central Europe on all matters, including security.
Relations with the rest of the European Union will not come quite as easily as under the Tusk-Kopacz governments, though. The PiS government will join both Orbán and British prime minister David Cameron with a far more nationalistic view toward EU reform to restore more powers to member states, especially as EU officials struggle with border security. As Cameron gears up for EU negotiations for greater British opt-outs prior to the 2017 referendum on UK membership in the European Union, Poland’s new government will provide him with a powerful eastern ally. Continue reading Poland election results: PiS sweeps to victory→
Beata Szydło, who is leading the conservative Law and Justice Party in Poland’s parliamentary elections, could become the country’s third female head of government. (Facebook)
On Sunday, voters in Poland, the pivotal country of eastern and central Europe, will almost certainly vote to eject the governing, center-right Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform), handing an embarrassing defeat to Donald Tusk, the former prime minister who left Polish politics last year to become the president of the European Council.
With the conservative, nationalist Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) set to return to power after eight years, Poland’s rightward move could undermine Tusk’s European role. More importantly, for a country of nearly 39 million people and a rising economic powerhouse in the European Union (with the rising clout to match), it could shift European policy to the right on refugee policy. Ever skeptical of Russia, a new conservative government would also agitate for greater European, US and NATO activism to counter Russian president Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and elsewhere.
May’s presidential vote: prelude to a electoral meltdown
In retrospect, the outcome of the October 25 parliamentary elections seems to have been settled five months ago when Polish voters narrowly ousted incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski in favor of 43-year-old Andrzej Duda, a conservative novice in Polish politics and little-known member of the European Parliament.
Former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński, a controversial figure on the Polish right, determined earlier this year that he would not seek a rematch against Komorowski, who defeated Kaczyński in 2010 after a tragic airplane crash killed the incumbent, his twin brother Lech Kaczyński, along with dozens of other top Polish officials over Russian airspace. Kaczyński instead, handpicked Duda from relative obscurity to carry the presidential banner.
Komorowski, technically an independent, nevertheless boasted the support of the governing Civic Platform and, until the very end, seemed likely to win reelection. But his wooden style and a lack of engagement did him no favors in a campaign where anti-establishment rage was on the rise. For example, rock singer Paweł Kukiz attracted nearly 21% of the vote as a protest candidate, running an acerbic and populist campaign that won Poland’s youth vote in the first round of the presidential election.
Komorowski fell narrowly behind on May 10 in the race’s first round, and he lost the May 24 runoff to Duda by a margin of 51.55% to 48.55%.
A kinder, gentler Law and Justice Party?
The youthful conservative Andzrej Duda won Poland’s presidency in a surprise upset in May. (Facebook)
Duda’s outsider status matched a growing sense that Poland’s strong economic performance hasn’t necessarily filtered through to the entire population, especially in Poland’s east, where traditionally conservative voters have missed the boom that’s developed in the country’s west and in urban centers like Warsaw. Moreover, Duda campaigned hard against Poland’s future accession as a eurozone member. Though Poland is notable for achieving the highest growth rate in the European Union since the 2010-11 eurozone sovereign debt crisis — GDP growth peaked at 4.8% in 2011 and achieved an impressive (by European standards) 3.3% growth rate last year — voters are nevertheless in a mood for change.
Kaczyński quickly learned the lesson of Duda’s success, and his party is running the same strategy for the October parliamentary elections. Instead of personally leading the party’s efforts for the parliamentary elections, Kaczyński turned the campaign over to another newcomer, Beata Szydło, a PiS deputy since 2005, the year that the PiS first took power (in a short-lived, two-year government that Jarosław Kaczyński led as prime minister while his brother held the presidency).
At a June party convention, Kaczyński quickly passed the political baton to Szydło, and Law and Justice held a lead in the parliamentary contest ever since. Like Duda, Szydło has taken a softer center-right tone throughout the campaign, avoiding the controversial topics that might otherwise have dogged Kaczyński.
Barring a complete meltdown, it’s nearly certain that Law and Justice will push Civic Platform out of power for the first time in eight years. The latest IBRiS poll, dated October 19, gives Law and Justice 36% of the vote to just 22% for Civic Platform, followed by the Polish left’s electoral coalition with just 11%.
Economic angst and refugee crisis impede Civic Platform’s reelection
Polish prime minister Ewa Kopacz, an ally of European Council president Donald Tusk, faces an uphill fight in Sunday’s election. (Facebook)
Such a damning defeat will leave Tusk somewhat isolated as European Council president and, potentially, in the awkward position of working against Poland’s soon-to-be government, notwithstanding the fact that Tusk’s election was something of an honor for Poland. Befitting the country’s centrality among the set of central and eastern European states that joined the European Union in 2004, Tusk is the first eastern European to hold one of the top EU offices of state.
Tusk left his government in the hands of Ewa Kopacz, a Tusk loyalist, former health minister and former marshal of the Sejm (akin to a parliamentary speaker), who has struggled in the last 13 months in an increasingly Sisyphean attempt to lead Civic Platform to its third consecutive victory. That may have less to do with the amiable Kopacz than a sense of restlessness over eight years of government by a party viewed increasingly as elitist and out of touch. Nagging scandals have emerged in the past two years, the most damaging of which involved the release of secret recordings of former foreign minister Radek Sikorski, former finance minister Jacek Rostowski and others making crude comments, including about the bilateral relationship with the United States, in Sikorski’s case.
As Law and Justice attacks the fits and starts of a Polish economy that still has some wrinkles to work out, Kopacz has been left promising, with little credibility, that young Polish workers can fare just as well at home as in western Europe. Despite growth, Polish nGDP per capita is just around $13,000, far below wealthier countries like Germany and France.
In addition, since the May presidential election, the European migrant crisis is now boosting the Polish right, as the number of refugees across the continent surges to numbers unseen since World War II. In the leaders’ debate on Tuesday evening, Szydło boldly attacked EU refugee policy and argued that ‘Poles have the right to be afraid’ of the unknown consequences of accepting so many refugees. Kopacz, for her part, argued that her government successfully negotiated down the number of refugees that the European Commission’s original quota plan entailed.
Whither Kaczyński?
The outspoken former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński has been trying to return to power for eight years. (Facebook)
The former mayor of Brzeszcze, Szydło is virtually unknown outside of Poland (and perhaps even inside Poland until her elevation earlier this summer), which is somewhat staggering for someone who is set to become the leader of the European Union’s sixth-most populous member:
An ethnography graduate and mother to two sons, the erstwhile PiS backbencher was only recently as unknown as Duda. But she has a reputation for being well-adjusted, hard-working and resilient. But also a little dull…. She doesn’t have to pretend to be down-to-earth — she just is.
Though Kaczyński himself formally nominated Szydło as the Law and Justice prime ministerial candidate, the party founder will surely play an important behind-the-scenes role if the PiS returns to power. So the largest question mark hanging over the coming PiS government is just how much it will be Szydło’s government and not just Kaczyński’s government. Last week, for example, Kaczyński made headlines by suggesting that migrants are bringing ‘all sorts of parasites and protozoa’ to Europe.
For all of Kaczyński’s odd statements, he may turn out to be more distraction than puppetmaster. Duda, for example, has taken a much friendlier line towards Germany than Kaczyński might have liked, and Szydło would be wise to follow Duda in avoiding the confrontational approach with European leaders that Kaczyński deployed a decade ago. Nevertheless, Poland will certainly continue to take a hawkish line against Russia, pushing for greater EU and NATO engagement over Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.
Poland’s voters will elect all 460 deputies of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, and all 100 senators of the upper house, the Senat. The deputies are elected by proportional representation in multi-member constituencies that contain between 7 and 19 representatives, subject in each case to a 5% national threshold. (Senators are elected on a first-past-the-post basis).
For a decade, Polish politics has been a contest between two visions of the ‘right’ — Tusk’s liberal, business-friendly and pro-European variant and Kaczyński’s socially conservative, religious, populist and eurosceptic version. That will remain the case on Sunday, though there are a handful of other parties vying for seats, a handful of which are new to the political scene.
The traditional party of the Polish left, the Democratic Left Alliance, joined forces with four other smaller leftist, centrist and green parties to form the Zjednoczona Lewica (ZL, United Left), under the leadership of Barbara Nowacka. The parties together won 18.8% of the vote in the 2011 election, but polls suggest it will be lucky to win barely 10% in 2015. Though the party boldly advocates taking in as many Syrian and other refugees as possible, the Polish left has long been out of sync with the electorate.
Kukiz, whose own anti-establishment movement took the presidential campaign by storm, seems to have stalled, with support for his ‘Kukiz ’15’ movement fizzling gradually since May, though the group may still win some seats in the Sejm.
The longstanding Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish People’s Party), a traditional Christian democratic party, and the more libertarian, anti-immigration and anti-European ‘KORWIN’ coalition of the hard-right MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke could also enter the Sejm. Nowoczesna (Modern), a liberal party formed in May by economist Ryszard Petru, is also hoping to cross the 5% threshold.
If all three parties make it — and if Law and Justice fails to win a 231-seat majority, a distinct possibility — Szydło might be forced to include one of them as a partner in a governing coalition.
It’s safe to say that Polish president Bronisław Komorowski’s surprise second-place finish in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday was one of the most unexpected events in Polish politics of the past decade.
Even after exit polls showed Komorowski (pictured above) training the conservative Andrzej Duda, it was still difficult to believe the popular, capable, moderate incumbent could have failed in a race where polls previously gave him a wide lead.
Though the presidency is chiefly ceremonial, the president serves as commander-in-chief of the Polish army and represents Poland in international affairs, though the prime minister (nominally selected by the president) establishes foreign policy. Notably, the Polish president also has a veto right over legislation, though a three-fifths majority of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, can override a presidential veto.
The presidential vote is widely seen as a prelude to the more important parliamentary elections expected to take place in October 2015.
Complacency among Komorowski’s supporters, the gradual rise in support for Duda (pictured above) and the surprisingly robust protest vote for former rock musician Paweł Kukiz, who waged a populist campaign that called for more direct representation in national elections. Kukiz demands the elimination of party-list proportional representation and the introduction of single-member constituencies, with legislators individually responsible for their voters’ demands. Ironically, Kukiz’s call for a first-past-the-post system coincides with widespread dissatisfaction with the electoral process in Great Britain, where the FPTP system made for some rather inequitable results in last week’s election. Nevertheless, Kukiz won over one-fifth of all voters on Sunday, and both remaining candidates are keen on winning over his supporters.
Both candidates will now advance to a May 24 runoff and, though Komorowski is still expected to win reelection, there’s a chance that Duda could use the momentum of his first-round victory in the next two weeks to propel himself into the presidency. Duda, a 42-year-old member of the European Parliament, is the candidate of the nationalist, conservative Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) that held power between 2005 and 2007. Unlike Komorowski, he opposes plans for Poland to join the eurozone.
Komorowski, nominally an independent but tied closely to the more pragmatic governing Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform), receives generally high marks for his performance as president. Komorowski, a former defense minister, has struck a reassuring tone on the threat of growing Russian ambitions in Ukraine and eastern Europe, and his reelection campaign has sought to reassure voters that he will be a steady hand with respect to Poland’s security. Continue reading Komorowski trails in shock Polish presidential vote result→
For Poland, former prime minister Donald Tusk’s elevation to the presidency of the European Council wasn’t the end of a complex inter-institutional process so much as the launch of a new domestic political process.
When former parliamentary speaker Ewa Kopacz, a Tusk loyalist and former health minister, succeeded Tusk as Poland’s second female prime minister on Monday, she did so with a reshuffled cabinet that she will hope to lead into the next Polish election, which must take place before October 2015.
For the time being, Kopacz (pictured above, left, with president Bronisław Komorowski) is expected to act as little more than a placeholder for Tusk, and the rap on her is that she won the job through her loyalty to Tusk, not through any innate political ability or policymaking chops. For now, she’s expected to do Tusk’s bidding, even as he and his team head for Brussels. It’s rumored that Komorowski disapproved of Kopacz’s elevation to the premiership, and there’s no shortage of figures within her own center-right Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform) who would rather be prime minister instead.
But if she wins a mandate in her own right, Kopacz could gradually build her own political base and, as time passes, you can expect Kopacz to develop her own policy priorities separate from Tusk’s.
Among the most surprising changes was the end of Radek Sikorski’s seven-year tenure as foreign minister. Sikorski, one of the most hawkish voices against Russian aggression, instead assume the job that Kopacz once held, the marshal of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament. Though the job doesn’t bring the same high-profile notoriety as the foreign ministry, it will given Sikorski more direct parliamentary and domestic political experience and it’s technically second only to the prime minister. That makes it more likely that Sikorski himself could become prime minister one day, especially if Kopacz fails to win a third consecutive term in government. Continue reading Kopacz puts imprint on Poland’s new government→
In the latest fallout from an increasingly disruptive series of leaked audio conversations in Poland, its foreign minister Radosław Sikorski apparently called his country’s ties with the United States ‘worthless,’ and otherwise disparaged the bilateral Polish-US relationship:
Mr Sikorski called Poland’s stance towards the US “downright harmful because it creates a false sense of security”, according to the new leak. He has not denied using such language.
According to the excerpts, Mr Sikorski told former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski that “the Polish-US alliance isn’t worth anything”.
Using vulgar language, he compared Polish subservience to the US to giving oral sex. He also warned that such a stance would cause “conflict with the Germans, Russians”.
At one point, Sikorski used the Polish word murzynskosc — meaning ‘slavery’ — to describe the bilateral relationship in a conversation with former finance minister Jacek Rostowski.
Across Europe on Monday, officials, voters and everyone else were trying to sort through the consequences of yesterday’s voting, across all 28 member-states, to elect the 751 members of the European Parliament.
Late Sunday, I began analyzing the results on a state-by-state basis — you can read my take here on what the European election results mean in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain.
This post picks up where that left off, however, with a look at some of the results in Europe’s mid-sized member-states.
With the count now almost complete, here’s where the Europe-wide parties stand:
The European People’s Party (EPP), which has been the largest group in the European Parliament since 1999, will continue to be the largest group, but with fewer seats (215) than after any election since 1994.
The second-largest group, the Party of European Socialists (PES) has 188 seats, a slight gain, but not the breakout performance for which it was hoping.
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats of Europe (ALDE) will remain the third-largest group, notwithstanding the collapse of two of its constituent parties, the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP, Free Democratic Party) in Germany.
The European Greens have won 53 seats, just two less than before the elections. The Party of the European Left, which had hoped to make strong gains on the strength of its anti-austerity message, gained nine seats to 44.
The Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a slightly eurosceptic group of conservative parties, including the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, holds steady at 46 seats — that’s a slight loss of around eight seats. The Movement for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy (MELD) gained six.
The real increase was among the ‘non-inscrits,’ the unaffiliated MEPs, which will rise from around 30 to 104. The bulk of those MEPs include the newly elected eurosceptics that have made such a big splash in the past 24 hours, including Marine Le Pen’s Front national (FN, National Front) in France.
But, in addition to being a pan-European contest with wide-ranging themes that resonate throughout the European Union, the elections are also 28 national contests, and they’ve already claimed resignations of two center-left leaders — Eamon Gilmore, of Ireland’s Labour Party, and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party).
Here’s a look at how the European elections are affecting nine more mid-sized counties across the European Union: Poland, Romania, The Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Hungary and Sweden.
That’s a big deal on the surface — with 40 million people, Poland is the largest European Union member after the United Kingdom not to use the single currency, and it’s one of eastern Europe’s fastest-growing economies.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times and Dylan Matthews at The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog are on the case, with very solid arguments for why Poland is crazy to want to join the eurozone. Writes Matthews:
It’s fair enough if Poland wants to develop closer ties to its European neighbors. But as [Krugman notes], joining the euro would deprive Poland of the strategy that allowed it to weather the recession so effectively. The key to the Polish miracle was massive currency devaluation.
Krugman and Matthews both highlight that the Polish key to outperforming the rest of Europe has been its ability to devalue the złoty and control its own monetary policy. It’s also helped that Poland has one of Europe’s lowest public debt loads — around 55% of GDP, compared to Germany’s 80% public debt load or 90% in France.
If you need to look any further for counterfactual proof, take a look at former East Germany, where economic growth still lacks former West Germany — despite the overwhelmingly strong political rationale for Germany reunification, it’s not clear that a currency union with West Germany made economic sense for East Germany, let alone a currency union with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland have all grown at more rapid rates in the past two decades.
Krugman writes, ‘It really does make you want to bang your head against a wall.’
But they should probably calm down, because Poland is as unlikely as ever to join the eurozone — Tusk isn’t taking a gamble so much as he’s taking a bath on the Polish currency issue by pushing its resolution to sometime ‘at the end of the decade‘ — and far after the next Polish election.
Over two-thirds of Polish voters oppose eurozone membership, and those numbers seem unlikely to change anytime soon, given the chaos we’ve seen in peripheral eurozone countries from Cyprus to Portugal.
Tusk (pictured above with European Council president Herman van Rompuy), who has long been in favor of eurozone membership for Poland, is looking for a way out, not a way in. Facing reelection in 2015 for his liberal center-right Platforma Obywatelska (PO, Civic Platform), Tusk certainly doesn’t want to go to voters with the albatross of eurozone support around his neck. Continue reading WIth referendum call, Tusk gently backs away from eurozone→
The piece targets Markus Söder, the finance minister of Bavaria since November 2011:
The politician from the [Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern (CSU, the Christian Social Union)], the conservative sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, is known for his tub-thumping rhetoric and has stepped up a gear in the euro crisis with vitriolic comments about Greece. “An example must be made of Athens, that this euro zone can show teeth,” he told the Bild am Sonntag tabloid newspaper this week. “Everyone has to leave Mom at some point and that time has come for the Greeks.”
It also points the finger at Alexander Dobrindt, general secretary of the CSU to which Söder also belongs — Dobrindt has also called on Greece to exit the eurozone by paying its debts in drachmas instead of euros.
Söder, an up-and-coming politician in the CSU, has previously served as minister for environment and health from 2008 to 2011 and from 2007 to 2008, as minister for federal and European affairs. He’s a solid populist, to be sure — for example, he’s in favor of Bavaria’s ban on the wearing of Muslim head scarves (but not nun’s habits).
But it’s easy enough to explain away the relatively strident tone from Söder and the CSU as political posturing in advance of Bavarian state elections that must take place sometime in 2013. The CSU will be struggling to maintain the grip that its held on Bavarian state politics since the 1950s. At the federal level, although the CSU-backed Angel Merkel has walked a tight line when it comes to balancing national and federalist European interests, but her leftist opponents are even more federalist when it comes to Europe and the eurozone.
The Spiegel list is dominated by some of the nationalist right’s usual suspects: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a member of the European Parliament; Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front national in France; Timo Soini, leader of the Perussuomalaiset (PS, True Finns) party, also a member of the European Parliament; Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom); and Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ, Austrian Freedom Party).
They seem like odd choices, though, because none of them (except perhaps Strache) seem to be on the upswing. Wilders is polling quite dreadfully in advance of the Dutch elections on Sept. 4. Farage and Soini are sideshows at best. Despite her strong showing in the French presidential election in April and the shadow she casts over the French center-right, Le Pen failed to win a seat in France’s national assembly in the June elections — and her party won just two seats in total.
When U.S. President Barack Obama misspoke at a White House ceremony by referring to “Polish death camps” yesterday, the reaction from Poland’s government was nearly immediate and fierce, and the White House quickly retreated, noting that they “regret this misstatement,” clarifying that Obama meant Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Poland.
But Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, in a harsh statement at a hastily arranged press conference, called for an even stronger apology that the White House “regret”:
The words uttered yesterday by the President of the United States Barack Obama concerning “Polish death camps” touched all Poles. We always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions lead to such a distortion of history, so painful for us here in Poland, in a country which suffered like no other in Europe during World War II.
Tusk has been Poland’s centrist prime minister since 2007 and his country is seen as one of the United States’s chief allies in Europe (so much so that it was one of the few European countries to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003):
It may seem odd for a moderate prime minister in a very pro-American nation to be picking a fight with the Obama administration over a verbal slip. It also leaves aside the thorny issue that many Poles collaborated with the Nazis during that war. But still, the remarks came at a ceremony designed to honor Polish resistance hero Jan Karski, who himself exposed the Nazi genocidal killings of Jews in Poland. That Tusk is making such a kerfuffle out of Obama’s awkward word choice makes him seem even more touchy and defensive about the issue.
But it also gives Tusk a potent political opportunity to reclaim the mantle of nationalism from his domestic political opponents, who propelled themselves to power in the 2000s on the strength of nationalism to an unusual degree.
That’s because Polish identity, to an unusual degree, is shaped by the centuries-long fight for its own existence, as you might expect from a landlocked country that’s had to deal with Germany on one side and Russia on the other throughout its history. For many Poles, their country gained its sovereignty just over two decades ago with the fall of the Soviet Union.
