Poland and the battle for the soul of Europe

Daniel Johnson recently asked the question: “Has Poland once again become a battleground for freedom and democracy?” His article merits re-reading and reflecting upon. Mr Johnson sympathetically evokes Poland’s history of external oppression. Even so, the article resonates with the increasing attacks by the EU on Poland and, also, Hungry. That’s a concern not just for Eastern Europe but for the sustainability of the wider EU, in its present form.

For a start, the political and economic scaffolding on which the article rests is shaky. In particular, there is no acknowledgement that the battleground on which “the war for freedom and democracy” in Europe is being fought, is within the EU itself — and it’s being waged on Poland and Hungary.

The EU’s lack of self-awareness is part of the problem. It’s not good at acknowledging facts or with its own self- critique. For example, the need for fundamental reform has been evident for more than a decade, ever since the banking and sovereign debt crisis and the rise of populism and anti-EU sentiment. Europe needs innovative reforms at every level, from its mission to its functioning, and especially relational autonomy among EU members. But it has baulked at reform —  it did so in 2014, when its flawed doctrine of austerity was already evident, and again in 2017, in the wake of the Commission’s White Paper. It faltered badly in its chagrin at Brexit (a hint perhaps of the adversarial attitudes directed at Poland and Hungary) and, even more even more dramatically, in the face of the Covid pandemic. Its most recent version of kicking the reform can down the road is the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Unable to reform itself, the Union is seemingly unmindful of its increasing political and religious repression of Central and Eastern European sensibilities and of its strident insistence on the vapourings of critical theorists (they are hardly science) forming its social policies. Instead, EU orthodoxy deflects away criticisms by attacking Poland and Hungary for offending against “European values”.

“European values” weren’t always “woke” ones. Indeed, it’s a moot point how far the EU can legitimately push, pressure and even threaten (using the Pandemic Fund) an EU member country to ditch their foundational Christian values. What are these values? The right to life, marriage, family and an authentic social economy — seamlessly interconnected, central to their history and culture, and integral to their longer-term macroeconomic and demographic stabilisation strategies. Th ose are the Christian values that Poles and Hungarians defend — but the EU prefers “woke”.

That should be the context for any serious assertion that “democracy is under threat” in Poland. Maybe it is, or maybe not — but the elephant in the room can’t be ignored. At a deeper level, the question is whether, or not, legal and constitutional arrangements in Poland and Hungary are a protection against what the EU itself has become —and the imperative of defending what were once European, not just national, foundational values.

The defence of such values through a free media in the public square poses particular challenges for Poland and Hungary, including a truly Orwellian social media and global “philanthropy” willing to spend tens of millions on political activism to subvert such values. The distinguished Irish Times journalist Breda O’Brien has shown, in the case of Ireland, the extent to which “foreign funding buys undemocratic influence” (Irish Times , 22 April 2017 ). In the face of implacable opposition from Brussels, visceral censorship by our good friends in Facebook and Twitter and a network of “philanthropic” NGO activism that has already honeycombed the official EU, criticism of press freedom in Poland and Hungary needs to be a bit more nuanced.

From the Polish and Hungarian perspective, an aggressively secular EU seems willing to roll over to every iteration of critical theorists, across every domain of national identity and culture — but is intolerant of any expression of its own  Christian patrimony , whether in schools or in the public square. They are not wrong. This is very evident if one goes back to Konrad Adenauer’s speeches in the 1950s or, for example, to the archives of Christian Democracy, on which post-war Europe (including the future EU) was built. In his book Is Europe Christian?  Professor Oliver Roy of the European University in Florence points out: “The importance of Christianity in European history, even in the very idea of Europe, cannot be doubted.The area we call Europe today roughly corresponds to 11th-century Latin Christendom, and it is self-evident that the main legal and political concepts that structured state-building, and later European integration, were forged in a Christian milieu.”

You wouldn’t think so today, looking at the EU’s stance towards Christianity and towards the avowedly Christian countries Poland and Hungary. This is not without its ironies. Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi were committed Catholics, whose faith and convictions animated their politics: building peace and democracy in post-war Europe, as well as a robust and inclusive social market economy that remains a definitive template for social protection and intergenerational solidarity.

More generally, if the argument being made is that Polish democracy is offending against EU democratic norms, then part of any balanced critique must surely be to ask how robust are the EU’s own standards against which Poland is being judged. One might reflect on whether, or not, the EU’s political and economic impositions on Greece via the so-called Troika — under whose regime successive Greek elections and referenda were simply ignored — were “ democratic ”. The EU Parliament found them to be oppressive; so, too, did the IMF. Or again: how far was the EU’s attempt to impose an ad hoc unilateralist migration regime on member states “ democratic ” ? “That’s different,” you may say. How so? Or closer to home, how far did the EU’s criticisms of and attempts to obstruct Brexit reflect a respect for democracy?

The EU’s resistance to reform reflects its opaqueness. It rehearses the rhetoric of subsidiarity and cultural diversity of “member states”, while always pushing towards an undefined “ever closer union”. It is intolerant of any and every vision of Europe that pushes back against “the New Europe”, to use the term coined by the late Roger Scruton, an advocate for democracy when Eastern Europe was impaled by Soviet Communism, who rejoiced in what Europe once was — and was deeply concerned at what it was becoming.

Surely Scruton had this lack of awareness in mind when, with colleagues from Eastern Europe, he pointed out in their Paris Declaration that: “Europe, in all its richness and greatness, is threatened by a false understanding of itself. This false Europe imagines itself as a fulfilment of our civilisation, but in truth it will confiscate our home. It appeals to exaggerations and distortions of Europe ’ s authentic virtues while remaining blind to its own vices. Complacently trading in one-sided caricatures of our history, this false Europe is invincibly prejudiced against the past…”

Finally, there is Mr Johnson’s analysis of the “Polish Deal”, the Warsaw Government’s response to the economic impact of the pandemic and demographic pressures. It is well wide of the mark. The Polish Deal takes the form of progressive tax cuts, increased pensions and support for aspiring homeowners. This, he argues, is tantamount to Poland “living beyond its means”, since it is not fully funded by tax increases, relying in part on higher growth and returning emigrants.

It’s a funny old criticism to make of Poland at a time when every EU member has experienced a sharp increase in their budget deficit and their debt/GDP ratio . But Poland’s ratios for 2020 are well below the EU average.

The demographic pressures on Poland, to which Mr Johnson refers, are real. But what he doesn’t point to is that they are part of a wider European demographic crisis , nor how Poland and Hungary are leading the EU in responding. Ten member states are already experiencing absolute population decline. The UN predicts that, by 2050, most EU member states will experience population decline. At a recent conference in Rome, Dr Mario Draghi, who led the European Central Bank during the banking crisis and is now Prime Minister of Italy, pointed to Italy’s and the EU’s existential demographic crisis: “ An Italy without children is an Italy that doesn’t have a place in the future…an Italy that is slowly ceasing to exist .” Think about that: “an Italy that is slowly ceasing to exist”. At the same conference, Pope Francis lauded the Italian Government’s decision to provide a financial incentive to families for each new child, as a concrete form of solidarity, while also encouraging longer-term, family-centric policies to give young families hope and confidence that they will be able to support big families over the years. “It is urgent to offer young people the guarantees of a sufficiently stable job, security of having a home and incentives not to leave the country.” Adenauer and Schuman would have totally got it. Hungary has been doing it for more than ten years.

Mindful of the scale and extent of this demographic winter, one might ask where was the EU when this was unfolding? The answer is that it was far too preoccupied with identity politics, the deconstruction of the biological family and with a deeply flawed view of human anthropology. That view sees having children as a burden and anti-feminist — instead, as Draghi pointed out, of a deeply fulfilling human need, and one which is pivotal to the sustainability of the EU and every member country.

So, Poland’s economic strategy is hardly based on prospectively “living beyond its means”. The most recent (2020) EU data indicates that Poland’s fiscal status is significantly stronger than most of its EU peers. The Polish Deal is no doubt politically expedient but it also signals a move towards Hungary’s “Family Friendly” model, which back in 2010 put support for families and children at the the heart of macroeconomic adjustment, addressing demographic pressures and, simultaneously, longer-term stabilisation.The Hungarian Government also currently allocates five  per cent of its annual budget to copper-fasten the long-run sustainability of family friendly policies. There are lessons there for Brussels.

When Mr Johnson points out that “an ageing and shrinking population cannot live beyond its means indefinitely”, he is dead right. But he might give Hungary and, more recently, Poland, some credit for identifying it years before the EU did — and responding to it with family friendly policies that prioritise marriage, having children (including large families), and meeting their aspirations for owning their own home. It’s not woke, but Adenauer would have said that Poland and Hungary were on the right track and that a robust, family-friendly  social market economy was the best guarantor of freedom and democracy.

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