Economically dependent, plus huge support for Brussels: Why Polexit is a non-starter

Despite the dispute between Warsaw and Brussels, Poland remains vehemently pro-EU, reports WIlliam Nattrass

Former Polish president Lech Walesa addresses participants during a pro-EU demonstration in Gdansk on Sunday (AFP/Getty)

Poland made headlines last week with its declaration that its constitution should take precedence over EU law.

By appearing to undermine the EU’s legal framework – based on the assumption that the bloc’s treaties are equally binding for all member states regardless of their domestic law – the landmark verdict led many to ask whether “Polexit” could be close at hand.

Such a scenario seems highly unlikely. Huge protests took place against the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling in cities across Poland on Sunday night. Opposition leader Donald Tusk – the former European Council president – led demonstrations in Warsaw for “all those who want to protect a European Poland”, believed to have been attended by over 100,000 people.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is clearly taking a big political risk in tearing ever wider the country’s rift with Brussels. Tusk and other opposition politicians are now portraying PiS as the party of Polexit, calculating that overwhelming public support for remaining in the EU will turn voters away from the current regime.

At the same time as the constituional argument raged, polls and studies consistently show Poland to be the most pro-EU country in the Visegrad Four –made up of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, the central and eastern European countries who are members of both the European Union and Nato – with more than 80 per cent of the population supporting membership of the bloc.

Malgorzata Bonikowska, president of the Polish Centre for International Relations, tells The Independent that even “radicals” on Europe in PiS’s electorate generally “don’t want to leave the EU, although they dislike EU institutions and are happy when the Polish government ‘puts them in their place.’”

Renata Mienkowska, a political scientist from the University of Warsaw, says recent events are part of “a general strategy of provoking – even among pro-EU voters – a sense of injustice: if the German Constitutional Court can question the supremacy of EU law, why can’t ours?”

But Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw office of the European Council for Foreign Relations, agrees that the government’s “brutal criticism” of the EU “stops short of openly advocating Polexit”.

For good reason, too.

As in other central European countries, Poland’s economic dependency on the EU is hard to ignore. Around 80 per cent of Polish exports go to EU countries, while 70 per cent of imports come from within the bloc. Poland has long been one of the EU’s largest net beneficiaries; only last year, prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki boasted that Poland was the biggest beneficiary of the bloc’s new cohesion fund.

As Brussels now refuses to approve Poland’s plan for the use of EU post-pandemic recovery funds, and with the bloc threatening to cut off other sources of funding over backsliding on the rule of law and human rights, the real test of the Polish government’s resolve may come when the wellspring of EU money dries up.

Some have warned that such EU sanctions could turn Poles against Brussels. Yet with the current crisis in relations brought about by the actions of the country’s own government and courts, it seems far more likely that public ire would turn on PiS instead.

And recent events in the UK will hardly ease concerns about the economic impacts of a potential Polexit.

Liberal media in Poland are reporting “Dantean” scenes as labour and fuel shortages bite, noting the irony of Britain’s desperate need for the migrant workers whom it had previously sought to exclude.

“Brexit is no longer exploited as an example of a ‘success story’ outside the EU, as it used to be by pro-government media,” Mienkowska tells The Independent.

Still, control over certain media outlets is allowing the government to limit exposure of the economic dangers of leaving the bloc.

“Pro-government media are not highlighting the UK’s problems with the consequences of Brexit, as they are conscious of the potential need to prepare a space for Polexit,” Mienkowska adds.

The government is indeed toying with the notion of leaving the EU, then – but how would such an unpopular move come about? Public support for EU membership makes “remain” an all-but-certain winner of any referendum on the subject. So would such a referendum even be allowed to take place?

Pro Europe protesters gather at Plac Zamkowy, in Warsaw's Old Town on Sunday, after the Constitutional Tribunal ruled Polish constitution has primacy over EU laws (Getty)

“Formally, Polexit can happen very easily,” Buras tells The Independent.

“A simply majority in the Sejm [the lower chamber of parliament] would be enough to pass a law bringing Poland out of the EU.”

Yet a unilateral decision by the Polish government to revoke the country’s EU membership would be an incendiary political act.

“From the political perspective, Polexit should only happen through a referendum, as accession to the EU was approved through a referendum. Politicians should feel this moral obligation,” argues Bonikowska.

Whether or not PiS will recognise this moral duty in another matter. Yet attempting to bypass a public which remains strongly supportive of the EU could be political suicide for the current regime, so the party will certainly keep a watchful eye on the development of public opinion.

The polarised political landscape being created by PiS may mobilise some of its voters against Brussels. But the government’s role in escalating the legal conflict, together with images of the adverse effects of Brexit in the UK, make the significant shift in public opinion required for Polexit to become a reality – with or without a referendum – unlikely.