New rule in Poland could be toxic for Cameron’s EU quest

A more conservative and nationalist government in Poland will make life more difficult for Cameron than before

(Guy Vanderelst © Getty Images/ Flickr)

David Cameron always comes across as a very British Prime Minister; never more so than when he ventures abroad. His little excursion to Reykjavik this week to take a sniff of the Nordic air – and explain why Norway is no template for Brexit Britain – was the latest stage in a typically restrained exercise of temperature-taking.

But Cameron is also regarded as a lucky politician. Even as he prepared for his trip to Iceland, news came from the other side of Europe of a change seen as potentially boosting his clout with Brussels. Parliamentary elections in Poland not only showed a decisive swing to the right, they propelled the conservative Law and Justice Party into power, the country’s first majority government post-communism.

As those attending an election party in London glimpsed the exit polls, they gasped as they totted up the projected seat numbers. For young Poles in London, this victory for Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party was a retrograde step; the worst outcome they had imagined was the party leading a coalition. Now, the eight-year run of the moderate, sensible and outward-looking Civic Platform was over, and a different, older-style government would take its place.

Seen from Downing Street, however, the result might have looked consoling, in a self-interested way at least. With a population of 39 million, Poland is a big country in the EU context and has rarely been reluctant to demonstrate its weight. With a conservative and more Eurosceptic government, Poland could be just the ally for the UK in its bargaining with Brussels. Poland’s special sense of national identity, its highly protective attitude towards its regained sovereignty, and its aversion to being patronised or pushed around all helped foster a mutual understanding between London and Warsaw. This feeling now stood to be enhanced.

This is not to suggest that Poland is shot through with Euroscepticism, nor that it did not embrace EU membership when it joined in the great enlargement of 2004. It did, and still does. But the former Warsaw Pact countries brought with them a heightened awareness of the value of independence and sovereignty, and this remains a sometimes complicating factor in relations with the “old” Europeans.

The UK, and the “new” Europeans, but especially Poland, might be said to have an “edge” mentality that sets them just that little bit apart of the Continental mainstream. It has been evident most recently in the fractious discussions about refugees. Some “old” Europeans went so far as to remind Poland that the benefits from EU membership flowed both ways. Security, free movement and regional subsidies came as a package with obligations, which in this case entailed accepting a proportional number of refugees. To its credit, Poland was one of the first former eastern bloc countries to recognise that logic, but it hardly did so with a good grace.

The Polish election result may or may not have been influenced by the refugee crisis. It seems rather to have been the natural extension of the public mood that unexpectedly elevated the Law and Justice candidate, Andrzej Duda, to the Polish presidency last May. It should be seen as part of a longer-term right-ward turn for which there can be other explanations.

One would be simply fatigue with Civic Platform, and a desire for change. Another would be the feeling among many ordinary Poles that their country’s relatively good economic performance has not reached them. Wages, especially, remain low – which is why the young and the bright still move West. Both fatigue and disappointment are easily projected onto Brussels, creating a climate of greater Euroscepticism.

The sum of these elements might seem to make Poland the ideal ally for Cameron in his quest for a better deal. At least some of what he would like, in terms of less “interference” from Brussels, Law and Justice and its supporters would like, too.

This is not, however, the whole picture, but dangerously partial – which is why it should be jettisoned now. For while London and Warsaw might have an interest in making common cause in Brussels for a few fragments of enhanced sovereignty, there are serious points of friction militating against effective, or desirable, cooperation.

Cameron has not yet set out precisely what he wants, though he promises to do so in a couple of weeks. But several of his presumed objectives cut directly across Polish interests – restrictions on benefits for new migrants and ending child benefit for non-resident children. Both measures are opposed in Poland as discriminatory. That is even before any discussion that could affect the principle of free movement. A more conservative and nationalist-minded government in Poland can be expected to make life more difficult for Cameron in these areas than its predecessor.

But there is another, more divisive, factor, and this is ideological and cultural. Law and Justice may have had some of its rougher edges knocked off over the years, but it remains socially conservative in a way that few European conservative parties now are: conservative about the family, homosexuality, abortion, IVF, and what it would call “Christian values”. No Law and Justice leader would be able to give the speech that David Cameron delivered to this year’s Conservative Party Conference.

Even if Cameron were to seek support from the new Polish government in his quest for somewhat looser ties with Brussels, he would find it far more difficult in practice than it might look. The Prime Minister would be better advised to capitalise on whatever goodwill he managed to generate among the Nordic EU in-crowd this week. They may be less seductive bedfellows, but they are much less politically toxic, too.