The exit polls from Poland’s election have Eurocrats grinning like Cheshire cats. After years of estrangement and antagonism, Poland’s centrist opposition Civic Coalition, has a simple message for Brussels: “We, the fifth-largest country in the EU fold, are back!” The fact that they’re led by former European Council chief Donald Tusk means the EU believes them.
Brussels had been deeply worried about Poland’s election. Little was said in public. EU figures don’t want to be seen as interfering in national votes, but behind closed doors there was a tonne of euro-nail-biting. Poland and Hungary have long been viewed as the EU bad-boys: flawed democracies and EU-hostile. They were accused of flouting the bloc’s democratic norms. In Poland’s case, Brussels withheld billions of euros of funds, pointing at the Polish government taking away women’s rights over their own bodies by virtually outlawing abortion, and threatening the independence of the judiciary and press freedom too by taking hold of the state broadcaster. Hungary and Poland also repeatedly stood in the way of agreeing new EU-wide measures to tackle migration and implementing ambitious EU climate goals.
So far there is only an exit poll to go on, but Brussels is doubly delighted at the expected outcome as it apparently bucks a trend much-feared by the EU – the apparent renaissance of the Eurosceptic hard right across much of the bloc. Those forces are polling strongly in France, Austria and Germany. Populists just won the election in Slovakia. Civic Coalition promises to return to the European mainstream, though it won’t be easy. The outgoing hard-line, conservative Law and Justice party is expected to retain a big chunk of parliamentary seats, limiting room for manoeuvre for Poland’s new government. Still, when I spoke to European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, he was upbeat. He hoped the tensions “haunting” relations with Poland would now dissipate, describing Warsaw as a core member of the European family.
Russia is another reason Brussels is keen to thaw frosty relations with Poland. Moscow sees any disunity amongst Ukraine’s international backers as playing to its advantage. But Warsaw’s tough line line against Russia was unlikely to waver, whoever won Sunday’s election. It’s an historic enmity. From that perspective, Nato was far more sanguine about Poland’s election result, than the EU. Warsaw has played an increasingly high-profile role in the military alliance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Nato’s ambassador to the US, Julianne Smith, told me what she observed on visits to Poland was a dedication by the Polish people – not just the Polish government – to continue supporting Ukraine. “They’re right there. They border Ukraine, they feel this war differently than some of the other allies across the alliance. “It’s very close to their daily lives. And for that reason I think we can count on Poland, we feel quite comfortable with counting on them over the long term, irrespective of who might be in power.”
Even before the outspoken Donald Trump became US President, Washington was deeply frustrated that its European allies didn’t spend more on defence. It’s delighted Poland spends 3% of its GDP on making itself feel safer. And it’s thought unlikely Civic Coalition will reverse that. In fact, Poland is so worried the war in Ukraine could spill over its borders, that it announced plans to invest in enough equipment and personnel to become Europe’s strongest army by 2026.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67118795
Comment: Poland’s strong opposition to Russia and desire to become the militarily strongest nation in Europe was never in doubt. Both Donald Tusk and his rival in this election to lead the government, Jarosław Kaczynski, agree on those issues. In fact Kaczynski’s opposition to Russia is not just national, it’s personal. He blames Russia for the death of his twin brother in 2010 in a plane crash outside of Smolensk. The difference lies in Tusk’s strong Eurocentrism compared to Kaczynski’s right wing conservative nationalism. In this way, Kaczynski is closer to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
Kaczynski’s Law and Justice (PiS) party garnered more votes/parlimentary seats than other parties, but far from a majority. The centrist Civic Coalition (KO), together with the center-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga) and the The Left (Lewica) are in best position to form a coalition government. The hard right Confederation Liberty and Independence did not do well enough to help Kaczynski’s PiS.
Under Tusk, I see the strengthening and expanding Three Seas Initiative (3SI) working together with NATO and the EU rather than being a rival to those older organizations. With the entrance of Greece as a full member and full partnership being granted to Ukraine and Moldova this year, the center of Europe is about to move east much to the chagrin of the Kremlin. The 3SI also stands as a potential local alternative to China’s Belt-Road Initiative.
TTG
https://apnews.com/article/poland-election-parliament-explainer-eef3abebff2f31f29ec0dadde24e71a0
Interesting development. There’s paranoid worry on Telegram by Markov that it’s so far only an exit poll and maybe the EU gamed the exit poll number by either doing the polling or planting agents at the sites to be asked by the pollsters. Likely doesn’t matter, the Kasynskii guy is kinda nuts and last century and earlier. I wonder what UK thinks. Is their 3Seas being seized by Brussels? They like Europe divided. My take on Brexit was that they were up to their age old tricks and that the referendum was pure hooey by their peep state.
When their war on Russia broke out, which it did, they didn’t want Germany to be involved except in the role of a cadaver who had died of withdrawal from addiction to gas fumes. Charley Windsor Troisieme was buying up land in Transylvania and Croatia yrs ago. If you read Bram Stoker’s Dracula you remember that real estate agent Jonathan Harker went to Transylvania to help the evil Counf purchase habitations in London for Dracula and his crew of vampires. He succeeded. Probably the Royals were overthrown covertly and the Dracula clan of Vampire friends inserted. So in the 21st century the evil Count Dracula returns to his homeland haunts. Is Nigel Farage also one of the undead? Was Boris Johnson? Margarita Thatcher obviously was.
Tusk is an example of the European bureaucracy, a commissar who will most likely support ,,the current thing”. My take is that with these results the Polish are going the opposite way of Hungarian souverenism, they will stay anti-Russian, but embrace the woke idelogy, most likely adopt gay marriages and other gifts of modern liberalism.
Kasynskii is way off the trend line as the western Anglo-Saxons-Jewish elites see it. Gay pride is indeed a decoration on that trend line but it’s only a social technology designed to keep peons at each other’s throats and possibly reduce the population somewhat, but the wars between China & Russia and the Anglo-Saxons-Jewish rulers will kill off far more. Granted, gay pride is a sign of decadence, and certainly it is a fact of nature that some small percentage are born to be gay, but it’s rising to such visibility because it’s being pushed by the upcoming resource depletions – not only ecological due to warming, but reduced simply because elites take everything for themselves. That bodes terribly enough that families simply don’t form and procreate because there is no future for them to even live. Hence nihilism. There were earlier cultures historically where homosexuality was rampant because a shah or sultan or Khan or king Solomon took all the women for himself and none were left save for prostitution which was actually sacred. It’s in the huge old agricultural societies / India, China, Russia and the early US where populations boomed and normal families were needed. That’s over – agricultural is corporatized, mechanized etc. It even ended in earlier times due to early crude capitalism systems such as Rome where slave plantations replaced the Latin husbandmen who were ganged into the legions.
Or look at it in a really boiled down extreme way as in engineering where you look at extreme cases first to eliminate cases. Where is homosexuality very common? Prisons and old time navies. Then you begin to get a better idea of what is happening.
Kasynskii is simply a dinosaur who sticks to his dinosaur practices, as unpleasant as it is to say so to people who knew another day once. It certainly could blow up in the faces of elites, it clearly already has and they are adrift at sea because their appetites and needs make them ethically little more than cruel ravenous animals which is far more grotesque than the gay people’s silly parades.
“They were accused of flouting the bloc’s democratic norms.”
Wow, Poland hasn’t been following “democratic norms? Why o why wasn’t there outrage about that NATO ally over that. How were they violating ‘norms’ (not treaties or laws btw):
“…pointing at the Polish government taking away women’s rights over their own bodies by virtually outlawing abortion,..”
How dare an elected government enact laws that Brussels does not approve of!
…. and threatening the independence of the judiciary…”
I wonder what the elected government of Poland was doing there?
“and press freedom too by taking hold of the state broadcaster.”
My, the State took hold of the state broadcaster.? How dare they not broadcast what Brussels wanted broadcast!
“Hungary and Poland also repeatedly stood in the way of agreeing new EU-wide measures to tackle migration and implementing ambitious EU climate goals.”
Wow! National government did not agree with Brussels? How dare they!
What did Brussels do?
“”In Poland’s case, Brussels withheld billions of euros of funds,…”
Sounds like they were waging economic war to help a particular party’s candidate…..
“The fact that they’re led by former European Council chief Donald Tusk means the EU believes them.”
Looks like punishing Poland got the election results the EU wanted. I wonder what they’ll do with the assets of the Polish central bank? Or hasn’t anyone at the BBC looked at the ECB and City of London lately?
Fred➡️ How dare they not broadcast what Brussels wanted broadcast!
The Polaks hate the Rookies. And many of them peak the lingo and know Cyrillic from their days in the Warsaw Pact. Yes, I know you knew that.
What you possibly didn’t know, and actually makes very little sense is that in Russian the letter B is their V. And it’s a contraction of Bo (Vo). And it means “In.”
In their lingo B Москва means In Moskva or In Moscow.
So old guys like Kasynskii and Lech Walesa etc who are old and not so sharp may actually read Brussels as B Russels which would mean In Russels which to old coots would mean In Russia. They spoke and read the language in their youth.
It makes little sense, but neither does Kamala Harris as POTUS or all by herself.
And Nigel Farage of Transylvania on the Thames always called Brussels the EUSSR, in his Linguini. I think his Linguini was red or yellow, I can’t remember.
Life isn’t fair. And then you fly.
F&L,
He’s old now, but Wałęsa was one bad ass union man back in the day. Long before he became president and in secret negotiations, he forced Gorbachev to withdraw Soviet troops from Poland and admit the Kremlin’s part in the Katyn massacre. The man had nerves of steel and cast iron balls.
He was indeed a piece of work, TTG. I remember him well.
Funny tidbit: In autotranslate on Ru sites I kept seeing the word “hunchback” appear in articles discussing Gorbachev and his policies. Most Russians despise him now so I figured it was an unsavory insult of their very spicy and humorous argot. But it turns out his name or an infinitesimal variant means hunchback, which itself may be an insufficient gloss, maybe ‘gnome’ or something would be truer, I don’t know. And by the way ‘Navalny’ means ‘bulk.’ You learned Polish, you know these things better than I. A Russian Tacitus writing from the future centuries may muse over how that name of Mikhail Sergeyavich’s went over with the many peoples of the NU SSR (they start every other sentence with Nu – well, just like we do. Well, maybe I exaggerate).
Did it inspire fear and trembling, a necessary attribute for a ruler, if so it may explain in part how he lasted as long as he did and passed muster with his fearsome mentor KGB chief Yuri Andropov.
I’ve read my share of memoirs, not so many as to boast, and I attempted to read Gorbachev’s but it’s so mewly and drivelish that I just thumbed through and read the last pages. I mean it’s terrible. I always thought that of him, by the way, he was pathetically weak. He fooled me even less than the Kenyan Man From Yes We Can. He did some great things, particularly in the popular arts, I might never have gotten the pleasure of enjoying so many of their lovely and brilliant artists other wise. Gromyko’s memoirs were very good and Dobrynin’s were really outstanding. Dobrynin in his concluding sections really let’s his readers know how weak and incompetent he was as tactfully as possible. If you look through Taubman’s bio of Gorby you find out why – his dad was the most outrageously kind and unharsh man I can remember encountering in a life of reading. A blessed person like Jesus, not meant for this world. Certainly not a special forces veteran of WW2 like Putin’s dad, not by a longshot.
You won’t like this maybe, but hard as it may be to believe, if you transcribe ‘Biden’ into Cyrillic as Бидон which is how the Russian jokers do it, it’s not quite right because that is closer to Bidon than Biden, but quite a few Russians usually pronounce his name that way on purpose because they intensely dislike him and want to make the same joke, it translates as “The can.” Toilet or Penitentiary and amusingly close to our own twerpish detractors who use Bidet for Biden, because they lack an education and imagination. My point?
“Yes We Can” takes on its true occulted meaning which the joking gods of the universal farce wove into it unseen and implanted into the mousebrains of Obama’s speechwriter or maybe himself. There are numerous absurdities with we – wee – next to Can but my favorite is to move the hard C to the left and pull an occulted other C from behind the C in Can to produce
Yes Weak And (the) Can — it prophecied Yes the weakling Obama and then the Can – Biden.
Walesa eventually brought down the Berlin Wall.
Wall Less, Ah! Walesa.
Anagram- A Sale W. W for West? A Sail West?
W is V sounding in those languages.
Valesa. A Slave. A Slav E (east) – a slave if East?
F&L,
“Life isn’t fair. ” And neither are the leaders in the EU, which the Poles will find sooner rather than later. Tusk will at least get enough to retire on comfortably somewhere warm.
For leaders life is fare. For the rest of us unfair.
“”In Poland’s case, Brussels withheld billions of euros of funds,…”
Sounds like they were waging economic war to help a particular party’s candidate….
Fred, why don’t they go PolExit? Wouldn’t it make sense if they dislike Europe’s rules so much? They can still remain in the NATO. Concerning Economic war Poland is still a net recipient. That’s why? …
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1135294/poland-s-contributions-to-and-receipts-from-the-eu-budget/#:~:text=Since%202004%2C%20Poland%20has%20received,to%20over%2077%20billion%20euros.
Although do they actually want to leave Europe? Or in tune with their political guardians in the US (like Steve Bannon et al) Make Europe Great Again by returning it to the beloved fifties?
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1708126032904007736
https://visegradinsight.eu/polish-misinformation-using-a-hungarian-recipe-the-curious-case-of-visegrad-24/
LeaNder,
Poland has been getting bribed by the EU for that long and they still voted against abortion on demand? My my.
I thought the propaganda was bad here but you guys still pay attention to Steve Bannon? You should get a freer internet.
Yep, Bannon’s enterprise in European political education failed immensely. No doubt the Big US Zampano had a much bigger influence without wasting too much time and efforts on matters. Well, a little, maybe; concerning Poland with his Vice in charge of the rest of New Europe?
Concerning Poland, well at least women are not sentenced only their medical helpers. That’ll teach ’em. 😉
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, after years of outright lying, finally gives the media a true statement:
“A fact remains a fact the Poles do not like us, they are not friendly with us, they take a very, very hostile position on all issues that concern us. We do not like it,…”
As Pfc Doherty used to say back on Charlie Ridge: No sh*t Sherlock!
Oh, I wonder why that might be? Enquiring Minds want to know!