Poles Fear Entry into EU?

[Krakowiak]

BY Valery Masterov
They expect that this will entail mass unemployment and deeper social inequality

Last week I witnessed two seemingly unrelated events.
The first one occurred in Warsaw. The metropolitan authorities got a bit of a scare on hearing that peasant leader Andrzej Lepper was gearing up for protest actions. He proclaimed seizure of power in the country as his "maximum program," which he typically titled "Self-defense." His "minimum program" was also disquieting to Prime Minister Leszek Miller: Lepper had announced that thousands-strong demonstrations would obstruct roads in all provinces, and that protesters would paralyze Warsaw and occupy government buildings.

The authorities have learned to their cost that Lepper usually means business: He long ago forced the authorities to reckon with him by organizing seizure of trains carrying imported grain and barricading motorways. Removing the barricades alone had required the mobilization of 34,000 policemen and 6,000 men from the so-called "preventive forces." When the prime minister and the interior minister declared that adequate measures would be taken, the rebel retorted: "There may be bloodshed."

Meanwhile, in the city of Plonsk, 70 km north-west of Warsaw, I saw chocolate-coated biscuits being made at the confectionary owned by the international group Danone. The biscuits were intended for the Russian market.

There is an obvious link between those two events. Lepper has been exploiting the Poles' fear of their country joining the European Union. Many of them associate EU membership with Poland's conclusive reorientation toward the Western market - a move that they think will bankrupt domestic producers and so cause mass unemployment and exacerbate social inequality. The workers in Plonsk, who make biscuits for the once hated Russians, fear the same consequences, but instead of putting up barricades they are trying to gain a foothold on the vast eastern market.

The head of the Engineering enterprise, noted for its production of supermodern windows for all tastes, does not expect anything good from the EU either. "Western goods are already flooding Poland," he says. "At the same time, customs barriers are being put up against Polish goods in advance on Poland's western borders, because not infrequently our goods are better and cheaper. The methods they use against us have long been tried and tested: They demand our compliance with standards that they lay down. Germany, for example, has barred import of our electric heaters despite their high quality."

The question arises: How far can the anti-EU protests go? Lepper says he knows perfectly well in which direction the wind is blowing, and that he expects to come to power in five years. "I will live in a Poland ruled by Self-defense," he claims.

His ambitions could put one in mind of our own Zhirinovsky, except that recently Self-defense hit a record high rating - 18 percent.

To counter Self-defense in the upcoming local self-government elections, the liberals and conservatives have set up the Community-2002 Democratic Front. But they don't seem to have come up with anything that can be used effectively against Lepper.

EU supporters predict that millions of Polish peasants will soon have to take up other occupations as no more than a quarter of peasant farms will survive on the European market. The nonsurvivors (some two million peasants) will have to seek jobs in services meant to cater for the survivors.

No wonder the proportion of peasant protesters against EU entry went up from 36% in February to 51% today. The peasants have been promised that in the event of agricultural reform taking off, they will get compensation payments from Brussels. This, however, is fairly cold comfort to them. In the very first year of membership in the "club of the rich," the Polish farmer will get just a quarter of what his French or German counterpart expects to get.