“If someone wants the European Union well, he or she should be against a system that marginalizes small EU countries. There is no example in history of a union that collapsed due to a lack of centralization. On the contrary, all unions are falling apart as a result of excessive centralization and disregard for the interests of the constituent parts of these unions,” said Prof. in an interview with the wPolityce.pl portal. Przemysław Żurawski vel Grajewski – political scientist, academic lecturer, specialist in international politics.
wPolityce.pl: On October 25, the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFEC) adopted a report recommending a far-reaching change to the EU treaties: on the European Union and on its functioning. It undoubtedly entails many dangers, not only for Poland, for example when it comes to the sovereignty and defense of the Member States. Where does the professor see the biggest threats?
Prof. Przemysław Żurawski, also known as Grajewski: I agree that these are very dangerous things. These changes will cover 65 substantive areas of European integration, including the area closest to me in terms of research, namely the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
The voting system in the Council of the European Union is – in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon – based on the voting power of individual countries proportional to their population, and therefore ensures the absolute domination of Germany and France, and in some important substantive issues – such as the priority of the Mediterranean and the redistribution of immigrants – also the densely populated frontline countries of the southern flank, i.e. Italy with 60 million inhabitants and Spain with 45 million inhabitants. This, combined with France, which has a population of 67 million, and Germany, which has a population of 84 million, means that virtually everything can be voted on in the EU institutions. This, of course, also marginalizes the EU’s eastern flank, where Poland alone has a fairly significant 38 million citizens.
Unfortunately, Poles are not very aware of the demographic size of individual countries. Let’s not forget that Finland has 5 million, Estonia 1,300 thousand, about 2 million – Latvia, less than 3 million – Lithuania, 5 million Slovakia, 19 million Romania, Hungary just under 10 million and the Czech Republic 10 million. So even if our entire bloc were in solidarity with the decisions of Germany and France, we would always be outvoted in every strategic decision!
We remember that in June 2021 – when the French and Germans wanted to invite Putin to the EU summit in Brussels – only the opposition of Poland, the Baltic states, the Scandinavian states, the Netherlands and Romania stopped this. After the changes we are talking about are adopted, when the veto is abolished, and with the qualified majority system, this would no longer be possible.
Similar examples could be multiplied – whether it is the priority between the Mediterranean and Africa versus the priority for Eastern Europe, or the easily predictable reset with Russia.
France and Germany will undoubtedly insist on the latter. All this is currently happening under the pretext that the Hungarians are blocking sanctions against Russia. This is not true in the sense that the Hungarians naturally negotiate and that Hungarian policy is unfavorable to us. It cannot be ruled out that this will happen in consultation with Germany to create this pretext. However, the fact remains that all subsequent sanction tranches are always passed and no one has ever successfully blocked them. Therefore, the claim that a qualified majority vote is required to effectively impose sanctions is incorrect.
And this is just one area of change.
For example, if we add education, which must also be centrally managed, school programs in Brussels will be determined by majority vote – depending on who comes up with something based on their own ideological whim. Moreover, all this is undemocratic. In other words, once the changes mentioned at the beginning come into effect, Polish voters will no longer have an instrument to change policy, even if they consider it wrong.
We must remember that every Member State is a democracy, which means that to become Chancellor of Germany or President of France you must have the support of German or French voters, and not of Polish, Slovak or Estonian voters. And these countries have such an overwhelming advantage that they don’t have to worry that anyone in Brussels will choose a chancellor or president despite them. Meanwhile, Polish, Estonian or Romanian voters will have no influence on how their decisions will be handled in the voting system in Brussels.
This is, by the way, the surest way to dissolve the Union.
Therefore, if someone wants the best for the European Union, he or she should be against a system that marginalizes small EU countries. There is no example in history of a union that collapsed due to a lack of centralization. On the contrary, all unions collapse as a result of excessive centralization and neglect of the interests of the constituent parts of these unions.
Your message today on the X platform regarding the above-mentioned changes to the EU treaties is very suggestive. “It looks like the EU is going to be centralized ‘to keep Americans out, Germans on top and Russians in’.
This submission is based on a document containing statements by the co-rapporteur of the EU’s draft amendments, Helmut Scholz, on foreign policy, security and defense.
Scholz writes clearly about entering into a dispute with NATO if we want the so-called European sovereignty and strategic autonomy. This is not something new that has been invented now. We heard from Macron that NATO is brain dead. We have heard that we must get out from under American rule. Hence my caricatured statement of NATO’s first Secretary General, Hastings Lionel Ismay in 1949, who said that NATO was created “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in and the Germans under control” and the to keep Germans under their control. by RM). This is of course a deadly threat to us, because it will end with the admission of Russia to Europe, dividing spheres of influence and marginalizing Poland.
In the above-mentioned document by Helmut Scholz we explicitly mention the need to “transform the armed forces of the EU Member States into Union-wide structures.” This is nothing more than an attempt to disarm Poland’s growing army in favor of a European entity that – everything indicates – has no chance of effectively defending anything.
The stories about the European Union’s military ambitions are thirty years old and the effect of actions in this direction is nil. Therefore, it is not about an efficient military structure, because it will not be created. And this, by the way, is one of the elements of mainstream populism. There will be no independent European capacity for less than 2%. GDP, and that’s what Germany is pushing for. There will no longer be a coherent Union if cohesion policy resources are reduced, so these are all contradictory statements.
What is dangerous in the material dimension of the majority vote is that the Germans are primarily interested in the integration of the arms industry, and the French in the integration of the arms industry and expeditionary capabilities in the Sahel (Sub-Saharan Africa). This means ordering or managing European funds, to which we will contribute, just as we now contribute to the European Reconstruction Fund. In return, we will carefully receive – as with KPO – military equipment, which will have to be ordered… obviously not in the United States, but in France and Germany. And if we find ourselves in a dangerous situation, we will be able to hear from Berlin that we will not receive spare parts or equipment because “we should not enter into nuclear war with Russia.” The Ukrainians have already heard this. We don’t come up with anything new. Another thing is that we would receive equipment that is effective in operations such as disciplining tribal militias in Mali, Chad or Congo, but not in stopping, for example, the attack of a Russian armored column. The priorities in this area would not be set in Poland, but in Brussels.
This would also inevitably mean a weakening of business and military ties with the United States. How can we explain the passivity of the Americans towards all these proposals?
I don’t have good news here. Just as Americans have devoted themselves for several years to the illusion that a reset with Russia is possible, they are now devoting themselves to the illusion that European security will be based on cooperation with Germany. After all, this was the purpose of the decisions taken in Vilnius and just before the NATO summit in Vilnius: President Biden’s declaration that the next Secretary General of NATO should be Ursula von der Leyen, the inability to -Russia Act of 1997 and its failure to grant Ukraine NATO candidate status. It has been given candidate status for the European Union, which does not oblige it to anything. This process of Ukraine’s admission to the EU could take thirty to forty years and end, for example, with a negative French referendum.
The three decisions mentioned: no denunciation of the 1997 treaty, no Ukrainian candidacy for NATO and Von der Leyen as NATO Secretary General – this indicates that the Americans chose Germany. This obviously required a change of government in Poland, and everyone contributed to this: both the Germans and the Americans. For example, we see the attitude and role of the American ambassador to Poland – whom he supported. And the Ukrainians, who saw what was happening and received such signals from both Washington and Brussels, decided that betting on Germany, and not on Poland, was profitable for them, which for them is a suicidal step and proves that they do not understand the situation . .
In short: we don’t have good news out of the blue. Now that there will be elections in the United States, the political class will focus on internal games. If there is a crisis in taking power, the situation will become dramatic, because Russia may try to take advantage of it, and there is still a war in the Middle East on the horizon.
Finally, it is also worth mentioning one threat: the expulsion of people from the Gaza Strip, including possible Hamas fighters, could lead to their transfer along with the flow of refugees to Belarus, and from Belarus to our border is being pushed. This poses an immediate threat. They are trained to jump the Israeli border, and it was undoubtedly better guarded than any border in Europe. Scenarios, even the most dramatic ones, begin to become possible in a situation where we will have a government as it is currently forming, that is, quite chaotic, and on the other hand we will distance ourselves from the US, who are immersed in an internal electoral struggle.
Source: wPolityce