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20 Years in the EU: Czech and Polish in Many Respects Differing Experience

English Pages, 14. 11. 2024

Many thanks for inviting me to Poznaň, to this year’s Poznaň Economic Congress, and for offering me the opportunity to speak here. I am really pleased to be here.

This is not my first visit to your city. I was here in June 2006 speaking – together with my good friend, the great Polish politician, the tragically deceased President Lech Kaczyński – at a public rally devoted to the 50th anniversary of the October 1956 uprising, which is connected with your city. This event shouldn’t be forgotten. My generation in the Czech Republic still remembers what the famous Polish “październik“ was. We were following this historic event in Poland with enormous interest. Some people started even to learn Polish at that moment.

The title of this morning’s panel is “20 years in the EU: A Review of Two Decades”. As I see it, such a review has at least two dimensions. The first one relates to what has happened with the Central and Eastern European countries after entering the EU and the second one to what has happened with the EU itself. Let me make a few remarks on both of these topics.

What has happened in our two countries in the last 20 years?
I have neither the ambition, nor the sufficient knowledge to discuss the developments in all the countries which entered the EU together with us in 2004. I will stay with Poland and the Czech Republic, even though I don’t pretend to be an expert on your country. Nevertheless, I have been here many times in my political era and it gave me many chances to speak with Polish politicians.

There is one striking difference between our two countries that is visible at first sight. A very slow, if not sluggish economic growth in one country, and a rapid growth in the other. This difference can be easily statistically documented. Poland has been improving its position in terms of the GDP per capita among the group of the EU member countries, while the Czech Republic has not. We all know that the GDP per capita level in one of the countries was visibly lower in the moment of the fall of communism. In spite of that, it seems possible that the Polish GDP will soon, in a few years, reach the Czech level. That is the economic side of the matter.

There is, however, another important difference, which can’t be so easily statistically demonstrated, but which may be even more relevant. This is the basic satisfaction with the last 20 years in one country (despite sharp differences and well-known open hostility between the two leading Polish political parties and their supporters) and the overwhelming dissatisfaction in another. It may be connected with the developments in a larger time interval. The Polish economic fall in the 1980s and the much bigger complications (and higher inflation) in the early 1990s is something what the Czechs never experienced. We, in the Czech Republic, also never experienced such a massive exodus as Poland did at that moment. The costs and benefits of such a radical personal decision were not identical in our two countries. The Czechs are more cautions and stay at home.

Why is it so? I have to admit that I don’t possess a simple explanation for these differences. Poland has an advantage in its larger territory, which gives it a wider domestic market. This played an important role both in the 2008-2009 crisis and in the Covid era. By turning to the domestic market, Poland was able to partly isolate itself from the negative external shocks, which influenced the whole world at that time.

Poland has also a different economic structure. It has an important agriculture and fishing sector, whereas the share of agriculture in the Czech Republic is one of the lowest in Europe. We don’t have the sea and the seaside. In addition to it, we have lost important parts of the relatively developed traditional Czech industry which was in the communist past dependent on Eastern markets. Poland as a larger country has retained “its” more or less complex national economy, whereas this is not the case in the Czech Republic. We have a much less complex, more fragmented, more “unconnected” economy now. This increases our dependence on foreign trade.

These differences can be – in a different terminology – called “the hardware” of the economy. Even more fundamentally different has been, however, its software, the economic policy.

Even in case of the Green Deal, Poland did not forget its national interests. It did not stop its coal industry and managed – in the context of the pre-accession negotiations, before entering the EU – to achieve important exceptions in this respect. The same was true as regards agriculture. The possible explanation is that Poland was not so much interested in “big” ideological disputes about the European integration process, but much more in the disputes about output quotas and especially about the EU money. The Czechs were always much less pragmatic.

There are undoubtedly other important factors. Is the different economic performance due to the larger amount of EU money coming into the country and/or due to a more rational use of it? The successful construction of the Polish high-ways offers a significant argument. We have used the visibly smaller amount of EU money (because of our higher per capita GDP) less rationally – on smaller projects in “soft” fields. The Czech symbol for EU money are the “cycle tracks” (ścieżki rowerowe), not highways. This symbolically explains almost everything.

I don’t aspire to analyse details of the Polish economic policy, but it is evident that the Czech economic policy had different priorities and made much bigger mistakes, especially in the last years.

The difference in economic growth may also be due to the fact that Poland opened up less “innocently” than the Czech Republic after the fall of communism and that Poland behaves more rationally inside the EU, in the EU “corridors of power”? The Czech Republic can’t imagine that it would aspire to have a Czech as the President of the European Council (the position of Donald Tusk in 2014-2019). As I see it, Poland has pursued a more pragmatic policy towards the EU and has behaved better. Is this due to a different national spirit? I am afraid it may be a part of it. To discuss this would need a different congress.

What happened with the EU?
I will not be politically correct, but I have to start by saying that the EU has been – in the last 20 years – significantly influenced (and negatively changed) by the post-democratic, post-political, progressivist spirit which dominates the West these days. This was not connected with the entry of the former communist states into the EU.

In any case, the European integration process has been transformed into a process of European political unification. This fundamental institutional transformation was brought about mainly by the Lisbon Treaty, which radically changed the functioning of the EU. As is well known, I was its most radical opponent at that time.

It seems indisputable that the Poles are much more pro-EU than the Czechs. The current Czech government is, in this respect, however, very Polish, whereas the Czech nation is not. We don’t want to be “melted down in the EU like a piece of sugar in a cup of tea” (which is my well-known statement formulated almost 35 years ago). It seems to me that the Poles are not afraid of that and – what is more important – the Poles don’t stay passive. They are much more self-confident, as they have demonstrated many times throughout history. The Poles have also taken advantage of Brexit, which created a special vacuum, for increasing the role of Poland in the EU.

When we look at the current situation, the EU is certainly not more united and/or harmonious than it was 20 years ago. The EU is more disputed and there are more doubts about its meaning now. I dare say that the EU is more divided than it used to be 20 years ago. The EU is also not more loved and respected by the citizens of the individual nation-states.

In the corridors of Brussels palaces, it is fashionable to explain it as a consequence of external (exogenous) factors such as Covid or the Ukraine war. I disagree. I am convinced that the main reasons are hidden inside. They are domestic.

The EU has made several tragic conceptual mistakes in the last years and decades:
- it has implemented a totally irrational energy policy known as the Green Deal;
- it has introduced a destructive immigration policy (characterized by the infamous saying “Wir shaffen das”);
- it has accepted the supranational ideologies of multiculturalism and progressivism that attack the existence of the nation-state.
- its ever-expanding ruling bureaucracy tries to dictate even the smallest details of life in individual countries;

I am not saying anything new. I often try to discuss these issues at domestic and international gatherings. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my views on it also here, in Poznaň. Thank you for your attention.

Paper prepared for the Poznaň Economic Congress, Session “20 Years in the EU. A Review of Two Decades and Plans for the Future”, November 15, 2024