Poland and Brussels face clash of cultures

Fri Nov 25 11:09:50 CET 2005

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het vaticaan heeft de macht gegrepen in Polen en Brussel lijkt niet vergeten te worden in hun kruistocht. Zie onderstaand artikel in de Int. Herald Tribune van gisteren. Het zou me ook niet verbazen als de kapitaalkrachtige anti-abortusbeweging in de VS als belangrijke sponsor optreedt. Hier zijn we voorlopig nog niet vanaf.

Groeten, 
Mark Giebels

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Poland and Brussels face clash of cultures  
By Graham Bowley International Herald Tribune

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2005

BRUSSELS When Polish members of the European Parliament erected an anti-abortion display in a parliamentary corridor in Strasbourg last week, Ana Gomes, a Socialist legislator from Portugal, felt she had to act.

The display showed children in a concentration camp, linking abortion and Nazi crimes. "We found this deeply offensive," Gomes said. "We tried to remove it." A loud scuffle ensued as Gomes and the Poles traded insults before the display was bundled away by the Parliament's guards.

But the matter did not end there. The incident was the latest skirmish in what some here see as an incipient culture war in the heart of Europe, a clash of values that has intensified since predominantly Roman Catholic countries from Central and Eastern Europe joined the European Union last year.

In the 732-seat European Parliament, and more widely in the EU, the clash extends beyond abortion to issues like women's rights and homosexuality.

"New groups have come in from Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Catholicism is certainly becoming a very angry voice against what it sees as a liberal EU," said Michael Cashman, 54, a member of the European Parliament from Britain who has campaigned for gay rights. "On women's rights and gay equality, we are fighting battles that we thought we had won years ago."

With a population of 40 million, Poland is the biggest of the 10 states that joined the EU last year. It is still uncertain, 19 months later, how the formerly Communist and overwhelmingly Catholic country will fit in with the rest of the EU on issues from foreign policy to economic management.

However, since the election last month of President Lech Kaczynski, a conservative and a critic of abortion and homosexuality, concerns are being voiced that, on social policy at least, Poland is on a collision course with Brussels. 

"This is for real," said Christopher Bobinski, director of Unia i Polska, a pro-European research organization in Warsaw. "This is a very reactionary, conservative group of people that have taken the helm, and on these issues we are going in the reverse direction to the direction everyone else in Europe is going." The effects of Poland's religious conservatism were felt in 2003, during the drafting of the European Constitution, when Warsaw led the argument that the preamble should refer to Europe's Christian heritage. After much debate, the reference was not included.

Then, last November, Polish diplomats played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in the fight to save Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian nominee for the European Commission whose remarks about women and homosexuality at a European Parliament hearing were widely regarded as offensive.

Although Buttiglione's candidacy was rejected by the Parliament, the affair provided the first glimpse into a broad-based clash of cultures.

Poland's impact on the European debate has been economic as well as social. Its fast-growth, low-wage and low-tax system is perceived as a threat in Germany and France, with their stodgier, high-unemployment economies.

West European worries have also been fueled by suspicions in the foreign policy arena ever since Poland sided with the Bush administration on the war in Iraq nearly three years ago. 

Concerns about American influence on Warsaw grew this month when Human Rights Watch charged that Poland was a host country in a network of secret CIA prisons for suspected terrorists. EU foreign ministers agreed Monday to write to the United States to seek clarification.

"We need to put a protective wing around some of our new countries that are quite unused to U.S. bullying," said Sara Ludford, a Liberal member of the European Parliament from Britain, referring to the alleged covert prisons. 

>From the perspective of the Cold War and decades of Soviet bullying, Poland's proclivities toward the United States may be understandable. In a similar fashion, Poles adhered to the Catholic Church for comfort during the Communist years.

But such understanding has done nothing to ease the trepidation felt in the EU toward Poland's new rightist government. 

Kaczynski's victory on Oct. 23 was unexpected. His Law and Justice Party came from behind after opinion polls predicted a victory for the liberal Civic Platform. Now, Kaczynski's party has a minority government and, analysts say, relies on the support of small anti-European extremist groups, like the rightist Catholic League of Polish Families, to exercise power.

In forming the new government, Kaczynski, a former mayor of Warsaw who banned the city's annual gay pride rally, has abolished the post of women's minister, making Poland the rare EU country without such a position. 

In a broader sense, Bobinski says, the new government is creating a generally less tolerant atmosphere, as illustrated last week when Poznan became the latest Polish city to ban its gay pride march.

 BRUSSELS When Polish members of the European Parliament erected an anti-abortion display in a parliamentary corridor in Strasbourg last week, Ana Gomes, a Socialist legislator from Portugal, felt she had to act.