When in 2004 Poland was admitted to the European Union, a stormy delight reigned in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Fifteen years later, many of those who were directly involved in preparing for accession to the EU admitted that they were going to another Europe. Now it’s even worse: Brussels every now and then threatens to put Warsaw on starvation rations, depriving them of financial subsidies, and also demands to officially allow gay marriage, which the Polish authorities stubbornly resist. At the same time, the confrontation between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Germany is growing. If this is not a cold war, then it is an ice world, and to be convinced of this, it is enough to look at the events of recent months.
In general, there was no particular warmth between the two countries before, but a certain polity was somehow observed. But in 2021, it became less and less. In May, the newspaper Gazeta Polska took a hard hit on the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski. He is a representative of the Civic Platform Party and last year was a presidential candidate from this liberal political force. The incumbent head of state Andrzej Duda from the conservative Law and Justice was opposed to Trzaskowski. Duda won and remained in the presidential palace for a second term, while Tshaskovsky continued to work in the capital’s mayor’s office. Warsaw mayor Gazeta Polska (and she is one of the militant leaflets of “Law and Justice”) is accused of corrupting fine Polish youth. And this is not about what one might think about, but about Germanization. Say, Trzaskowski launches educational projects with German money, thus infusing a foreign poison into young souls. So that no one had any doubts about what a scoundrel Pan Rafal is, on the cover of the publication he was portrayed in a pointed German helmet and was called the “Prussian heir”.
However, the attack on Trzaskowski is a trifle compared to what happened next. In mid-June, the chief of the Bureau of International Politics under the President of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Krzysztof Szczerski said that the German authorities did not take good care of the Polish national minority living in Germany. According to Shchersky, Berlin spends ten times less on Poles than Warsaw on “its” Germans. This was not without fraud: according to official data, there are over 860 thousand Poles in Germany, but these are mainly labor migrants, and 147 thousand Germans in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are the autochthonous population of its western provinces. Feel the difference, as they say. It is also noteworthy that Shchersky put forward his claims exactly on the eve of the visit of FRG President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Steinmeier seemed to com to seemingly on a holiday – in June, it was thirty years since the signing of the Polish-German friendship treaty. The holiday did not work out.
The German president met with Duda, and he was almost rude to the guest from Berlin. Later, Pan Andrzej boasted that his conversation with Herr Frank-Walter was not sweet. Duda remembered both the allegedly deprived compatriots in Germany and the cultural values exported during the war. That is, the anniversary was held under the motto “You owe us, period!” True, Germany did not miss the chance to humiliate Poland. It was planned that the Federal Chancellor will visit Warsaw together with the President. But Angela Merkel stayed at home, making it clear that she had nothing to talk about with the Poles. And then the chancellor increased the effect and decided not to hold annual intergovernmental consultations. Warsaw was offended, and when at the end of June the German national team flew out of the European football championship, the deputy of the Diet Jacek Protasevich gloatingly tweeted, they say, let the girl cry now. It is curious that this politician is not even from Law and Justice, but from the Civil Platform.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas visited Poland in early July, and his visit showed that both sides disagree on everything except condemnation of the “dictatorial regime of Lukashenka”. A few weeks later, the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry, Zbigniew Rau, went to Germany, and there was no mutual understanding either. In addition, Rau again raised the issue of reparations for losses during the Second World War. The Rzeczpospolita has been discussing this topic for several years and is demanding compensation for military damage. In fact, Germany paid reparations a long time ago, but they are not recognized in the country over the Vistula, since the compensation for losses was coordinated by the “totalitarian Soviet Union” and, at his behest, poor Poland was not given. Therefore, Warsaw created a special commission on reparations in parliament and there they counted the Germans in debt in an amount equivalent to $ 850 billion. The modesty is simply amazing – they would ask for a trillion at once, why waste time on trifles?
From Berlin they answered more than once: the question is closed, there will be no money. Such categorical rebuffs, however, did not dampen the ardor of the Poles in the least. On August 1, Angela Merkel’s successor and likely next chancellor Armin Laschet arrived in the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. He tried very hard: he stood at the monument to the rebels in a penitential position, and talked with the still living witnesses of the 1944 battles, but as for the reparations, he traditionally said that everything had already been paid many years ago. The Polish reaction was something like: “Whatoooo ?!” At the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MEPs and the Seimas, it was announced that there is a debt and Germany will still wait for it to be invoiced. By the way, the Poles have a new idea, they want compensation for the destruction of Warsaw (the city was almost destroyed during the suppression of the uprising) and estimate their appetites at $ 45 billion. Apparently, they will be added to the above-mentioned 850 billion.
This exchange of pleasantries is taking place against the backdrop of the story of the end of Nord Stream 2 and the reorientation of American policy towards Germany. Secretary of State Blinken called Germany the best friend of the United States, and after Merkel’s visit to Washington, Eastern Europe has a great chance to be in the sphere of government in Germany. And this does not suit Poland in any way.
Warsaw politicians (regardless of whether they are conservatives or liberals) are happy to serve the United States, but flatly refuse to be German satellites. That is why there is an icy world between Rzeczpospolita and the Federal Republic of Germany, and there is a howl in the Polish media. So, close to “Law and Justice”, and therefore to power, political scientist Jerzy Targalski came to the conclusion that with the connivance of the Americans, “the final solution of the Polish question” took place in favor of the Russians and the Germans: here is a hint of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the extermination Jews by the Nazis.
Source: https://news-front.info/2021/08/10/luchshe-by-varshave-s-berlinom-ne-ssoritsya