“EU needs not German leadership, but German self-restraint,” says Poland’s foreign minister

The European Union is threatened not only by the external imperialism of Russia but also by “imperialism within”, especially on the part of Germany, warns Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau.

“The EU needs not German leadership, but German self-restraint,” Rau wrote in an article published by the Rzeczpospolita daily. He accuses Germany of seeking to increase its influence over other member states by, among other things, pushing the expansion of majority voting in the EU in place of seeking consensus.

In June, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the EU treaties to be changed in order to better respond to threats. Among the measures it suggested is the abolition of veto powers on certain issues by switching from unanimity to qualified majority voting among member states.

Rau, however, warned that any “reform of the community’s decision-making process…should go in the direction of curbing the aspirations of domination by creating the conditions for genuine freedom and equality of member states, and thus stopping all imperial pursuits and practices”.

In his view, imperialism within the EU consists of “the desire to dominate partners, impose a rationale on them, ignore their rights, interests and needs, as well as their protests”.

He presented Germany as an example of this, pointing to the recent pushing through of limits on gas usage in the EU despite opposition from Poland and some other member states. Likewise, before the war in Ukraine Germany went ahead with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline despite protests from Poland and others.

Since Germany’s energy strategy “collapsed as a result of Russian aggression, the common good has been redefined, taking the form of European solidarity”, with Berlin pushing for a reduction in gas use by all member states, “including those that had persistently warned their European partners against becoming dependent on Russia”.

Rau argued that countries “that have experienced imperialist policies more than those who have practised them themselves in the past” should take the lead in paving the path of the EU’s future.

Rau’s remarks follow other recent tough language towards the EU from figures in Poland’s ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), which has regularly been in conflict with Brussels since coming to power in 2015.

Earlier this month, in an essay for German newspaper Die Welt, PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki warned, like Rau, that “we must defeat the threat of imperialism within the EU” as well as the external threat of Russian imperialism. He called the EU an “oligarchy in which the strongest hold power”.

That followed comments by PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, who declared that Poland has no reason to fulfil its obligations towards the EU given that Brussels has broken agreements with the Polish government. Kaczyński also warned of a “German-Russian plan to rule over Europe”.

Last week, a senior PiS MEP, Zdzisław Krasnodębski, declared that Poland faces a “greater threat to our sovereignty from the West”, in the form of the EU, “than from the East”, in the form of Russia.

Main image credit: Sebastian Indra/MSZ (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.