Polish FM says the EU lacks coherence
Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, has said that the problem of the European Union is not its excessive centralisation but its incoherence.
Sikorski, who addressed a programme part of the Civic Platform convention at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw on Sunday, said that the EU's real problem was that its rivals – China, Russia, and the United States – have the unity of command, while the EU did not.
During the panel headlined "Changing the Rules of the Game? Foreign Policy in a New Era," the foreign minister referred to the words of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's main opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, who said that "Germany wants to deprive us of our state. The French are right there with them."
Sikorski said that, if he properly understood Kaczynski's statement, the PiS leader was speaking about a situation in which if the EU became a federation, a hypothetical sovereignty centre would be moved from member countries to Brussels.
The foreign minister stated that a new treaty approved by the European Parliament and EU member states would be needed in order to transform the EU, and added that such situation seemed not probable for him.
According to Sikorski, scaring people with the European Union has serious consequences because it distracts from what the EU's true dilemma is.
Having repeated that the EU lacked the unity of command, Sikorski said that since the EU was a confederation, it was very difficult to reach agreement on everything and make quick decisions. "The EU's problem is ...incoherence, for example in the field of defence," Sikorski concluded.
Referring to Kaczynski's statement, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters on the sidelines of the programme part of the Civic Platform convention at the Copernicus Science Centre that he would not allow anyone to put Poland and the European Union at odds with each other.
Having admitted that Poland closely cooperated with Germany and France, Tusk said this was necessary for the country's security in the future.
Tusk stated that he was told by many Britons that they regretted their decision to leave the EU and appealed to the public to draw proper conclusions from this lesson.
"I do not want to scare anyone, but I know, I listen to them: those from PiS, those from the Confederation [hard-right party]. Their first goal will be to take Poland out of the European Union and destroy the European Union. And this who will benefit most from this, ...is Putin...," the prime minister concluded.(PAP)
at/ mmr/ know/
