On July 1, 2011, Poland will for the first time take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. For Poland to be truly successful in this role, major dedication from the country's public administration and also a measure of domestic political peace will be required. Since political peace will be impossible to obtain – the parliamentary elections are now scheduled to take place in October 2011 – let us explore what exactly the Polish government and other public actors can do in order to generate major pro-Polish momentum in the European Union in July 2011.
By far the most important move Poland could make on July 1 2011 is to join the exchange-rate mechanism, the ERM2. There have been many statements from various political players on the issue of Polish Euro accession, not all of them supportive. Indeed, the general public and the political class are deeply divided between and amongst themselves over the issue of the common currency. Accession to the ERM2 mechanism could therefore prove an important gesture of unity, without actually committing Poland to joining the euro zone at a specific date.
Secondly, there is the issue of the Polish opt-out from applying the Charter of Fundamental Rights on Polish soil. This topic could be revisited with a parliamentary adoption of the text of the Charter and its introduction into domestic law. Alternatively, the Polish government could propose an amendment to the Union Treaties on the issue (by i.e. shifting the reference to Poland into Czech Republic, which requested to be granted the same opt-out as Poland and the UK have). Changing individual parts of an EU treaty has become a standard process, as there is already a procedure which allows for this within the Union (altering the number of seats in the European Parliament). Moreover, the President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, is now preparing a new treaty change on economic governance.
The third key issue Poland should address on its accession to the Council presidency – the country's adherence to the enhanced cooperation on divorce laws – would cost Poland nothing, but would nevertheless take some political courage. The issue concerns closer cooperation among certain EU members on applying divorce laws. This would help Polish citizens, who either live abroad and/or are married to a foreigner, in clarifying which law applies in their case if they want to file for divorce. In Poland this should be a technicality, but the Polish government pretends this is a non-issue, as it could (but in my assessment, would not) potentially open another debate in the country about a moral topic. The government fears that the Catholic Church would oppose enhanced cooperation, but in fact the Church has so far not actively opposed the issue in other countries in the EU where the enhanced cooperation is being applied.
The fourth issue Poland should deal with concerns the Polish contribution to something termed the “European public sphere” – the unofficial space where problems concerning Europe can be discussed and debated. It is often said that such a sphere hardly exists and that the only elements in the audio-visual world that unify Europeans are the Champions League, the Eurovision song contest and the Eurosport TV channel. In the political sphere there is Euronews, a news channel on EU affairs. It broadcasts in a number of languages, including Russian and Turkish, but not in Polish. It would take Telewizja Polska to become actively engaged (maybe with a grant from the government) in order for Euronews to start broadcasting in Polish, too. Should the channel start operating in Polish on July 1, 2011, that would be a major mental breakthrough for the Brussels EU headquarters in internalising the 2004 enlargement.
