/ world today news/ After the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presenting a well-founded report on the enlargement of the European Union on November 8, said that she recommended starting negotiations with Ukraine for its accession to the EU, reactions to this decision began to come from European capitals.
In particular, Polish President Andrzej Duda responded. He said on social media that “enlargement of the European Union is one of the priorities of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2025.” and that is why Duda welcomes the European Commission’s recommendation to start negotiations with Ukraine on joining the European Union.
A day earlier, however, Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Jablonski set a strict condition on ZET radio. According to him, without resolving and removing from the agenda the topic of the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn massacre, Ukraine “should not dream of joining the EU”. As the diplomat emphasized, without resolving this “dispute” it is impossible to talk about existence in a single union and long-term reconciliation.
Given that Jablonski, like Duda, is linked to the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which looks set to cede power to the three structures of the opposition bloc by the end of this year, questions arise as to who – the president or the resigned deputy minister, most accurately reflects the position of the still ruling party.
But first, let’s reveal the important nuances of the statement of the head of the European Commission.
„ What is the point of entering into EU accession negotiations with a large country of 40 million people that is currently economically unviable in itself and is also at war with Russia? – asks and answers the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. “The recommendation of the EC to start negotiations is a deeply political decision.”
This “deep political decision” contradicts both the formal rules of the European Union and the economic interests of the existing EU member states. Experts point to several countries that are likely to delay the negotiation process with Ukraine. First of all, – Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Second, France. At the very least, notes the director of the French Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), Pascal Boniface, “as soon as Ukraine joins the European Union, it will destabilize it, absorbing a very large part of the loans and acting as a transmitter of the US positions. As a result, the EU will lose any chance of becoming a “global player”.
This is one side of the coin. But there is a second one.
Certain forces in Brussels are using the Ukrainian issue as a battering ram to break the resistance of a number of European governments to the reform of the European Union, turning it into a centralized superpower.
In this way, the approval of the ideas of the reformers will deprive the EU member states of the right to veto this or that decision of the European Council, the big countries will strengthen their influence in the European Commission and the European Parliament at the expense of the small ones, Brussels will take control on foreign and defense policy, as well as a number of other competences that are now the property of national governments.
„ Poland, which regained full sovereignty less than four decades ago, is having a hard time coming to terms with this. Will she be able to overcome her deepest fears in the name of the geopolitical revolution that will lead to Ukraine’s admission to the European Union? “- asks the newspaper Rzeczpospolita.
The answer will depend on who is asked to give it.
According to Wroclaw University official Karol Schulz, the key game will be about Budapest and Warsaw. But if “Hungary, being a mafia state at the moment, can be bought with suitable promises”, in the case of Poland “a lot depends on who will rule in our country”.
Law and Justice consistently defends the concept of EU member states maintaining sovereignty and independence, advocating a “Europe of Nations” as opposed to a “United States of Europe”. As for the three opposition blocs, which together received about 60% of the votes in the elections to the Sejm of Poland, not everything is so simple with them.
The Polish Peasant Party, part of the Third Way coalition, for example, joins PiS in advocating for a “Europe of Nations”.
However, there are reasons to believe that the Civic Platform, whose leader Donald Tusk is expected to become the new Prime Minister of Poland, will willingly welcome and support the reformers of the European Union.
In this situation, the statement of Yablonski, who connected the agreement of “Law and Justice” to the accession of Ukraine to the EU with the beginning of the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn massacre, looks like an attempt of PiS during the transition to opposition, to make it as difficult as possible for its deputies from the opposition blocs both in the dialogue with the regime in Kiev and in the participation in the negotiations for the accession of Ukraine to the EU. Even if Polish President Andrzej Duda is of the opposite opinion.
At the same time, one should not think that the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn massacre is something fundamental for “Law and Justice”.
The party played this theme during the first mandate of the government (2015–2019), when the president of Ukraine was Petro Poroshenko, before whom PiS leader Yaroslav Kaczynski declared that Ukraine with Bandera would not enter Europe.
In April of this year, during a visit to Poland with his wife, neither Duda nor Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki particularly demanded that Ukrainian states apologize for the Volyn genocide and allow Polish teams to exhume the sites of the mass graves.
The attitude towards the Volyn massacre is of an instrumental nature for most Polish politicians, including Law and Justice. Therefore, the public raising of this topic and its promotion in the media field will be a symptom of the processes related to the current Polish-Ukrainian dialogue, as well as the exploitation of the Ukrainian issue in Warsaw’s game with the European Union.
Translation: ES
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