THE 28 VISIONS OF EUROPE: THE VIEW FROM POLAND

“The European Commission needs to be stronger. If it is to play the role of an economic supervisor we need Commissioners to be genuine leaders, with authority, personality  and charisma  to be true representatives of common European interests. To be more effective, the Commission should be smaller. The EC now has 28 members. Member States should rotate to have their Commissioner.

The draconian powers to supervise national budgets should be wielded only by agreement of the European Parliament. The Parliament needs to stand up for its role and tasks. What we need to do is to give political expression to the European public opinion. To help it along we could elect some seats in the European Parliament from a pan-European list of candidates. We need more political education for citizens and political elite. The Parliament should have its seat in a single location. We could also combine the posts of the President of the European Council and that of the European Commission.

What is crucial is that we maintain coherence between the Euro area and the EU as a whole. Community institutions must remain central. It’s not enough to say that countries may participate once they join the Euro zone. Instead of organising separate Euro summits or exclusive meetings of finance ministers we can continue the practice from other EU fora where all may attend, but only members vote.

The more power and legitimacy we give to EU institutions, the more secure Member States should feel that certain prerogatives, everything having to do with national identity, culture, religion, lifestyle, public morals, and rates of income, corporate and VAT taxes, should forever remain in the purview of states.

Poland favors a deeper integration and the creation of a stable political union. We assume that Member States will forever remain independent, with the right to exit the EU and the right to define the scope of powers transferred to the community level. We are in support for deepening integration whenever it serves Poland and Europe; for tightening EU external border controls; for completing the single services market; for establishing a single digital market; for implementing a competitive energy market trading in particular in gas which would banish the spectre of energy-related blackmail and cut costs for consumers. The European Commission should have a similar competence in single market affairs as in competition policy. In order to make this happen, we need less directives and more regulations, applicable directly.

Putting forward solutions, co-shaping the European Union. This is Poland’s vision of Europe. All the while, we are aware that Poland’s say in European matters will be bigger as the country’s economic standing improves, and if the Polish elites are responsible and pro-European.

Today the number one goal is to ensure that the laws we have set for ourselves are respected, thereby creating a crisis-resistant eurozone. We should be deepening integration within the current legal regime. There is no need to multiply institutional frameworks. But it is in everyone’s interest to have a sound fiscal policy.

What we do need is an honest and open debate, but not a legal one. We believe that in Europe we are far too often speaking the Brussels jargon that even those that use it can barely understand. What we need is a political debate. It is also a commitment to a strengthened Union with a viable economic and monetary policy; a Union engaged with its neighbourhood and open.

There has been enough European mud-slinging. We need to remember that Brussels can only do what we, the Member States, will allow it to do. In other words Brussels is us, the Member States getting together and deciding together. Therefore, it is our responsibility to refrain from bashing the EU in the domestic political discourse on every single occasion and to put an end to scapegoating Brussels for every unpopular measure we must take. We national politicians have to begin owning what we  in Brussels need to do.

The talk of federalization of Europe can sometimes be misunderstood and can sometimes be used to scare people. Certain prerogatives should forever remain in the province of the Member States. In our national debate we can justify delegating some powers to Brussels in areas where economy of scale makes sense and where all jointly benefit. Poland is not afraid of further reforming the EU. The EU is a constantly changing and depends on the momentum, on the will of Member States to push forward. There is no reason for keeping the EU’s institutional architecture as complicated as it is today. There is a need  to press the European Parliament to become more representative and less self-absorbed. Moving the European Parliament would be a good start, too.

We have a problem about how EU’s institutions relate to one another. We need to give EU institutions more authority and make them more democratic. We can only give them more authority to act on behalf of all of us, if we make them more democratic. Poland’s policy is to press for a European list to the European Parliament, to have elections to the EP on a single date all over Europe, and for the President of the Council and the President of the Commission to be not only approved, but perhaps elected by the European Parliament, or even more broadly – by the European people.

The European Union for Poland means pragmatic politics. We believe that the European Union needs to return to its pragmatic self, to give the Europeans more space and freedom to develop, to grow, to capitalize on their differences. It is about the principles underpinning the EU: subsidiarity, solidarity, cohesion, the rule of law. These were based on pragmatic assumptions. The cloud of economic crisis has a silver lining – it compels us to return to the very basis of the European integration. We need a simpler and clearer EU.