Even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes Germany and Poland are aligned with respect to "politics, social issues and civic society", Berlin and Warsaw are still divided due to three important issues: energy, the European project and Donald Tusk. When paying an official visit to Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło, Polish President Andrzej Duda and the leader of Polish ruling party Order and Justice Jarosław Kaczyński on February 7, Chancellor Merkel emphasized the aspects that should unite Germany and Poland in a cooperation aimed at relaunching the European Union facing the Brexit, the migration crisis and the election of Donald Trump as the new President of the United States.
Chancellor Merkel, in particular, underlined how tight is the relationship between Berlin and Warsaw with respect to investments and labor, due to the relevant amount of German companies investing in the Polish market on the one hand, and the huge number of Polish workers emigrated to Germany over the past years.
Chancellor Merkel also made important concessions towards Poland, endorsing the need to strengthen EU borders and raise the budget for defense expenses aimed at strengthening NATO structures, as Poland is vocally advocating since Russia annexed Crimea and provoked crisis in Eastern Ukraine. From the political point of view, albeit not clearly, Chancellor Merkel showed how Poland is needed by Germany to maintain alive the European Union in a period of crisis and growing disaffection towards both the EU and German leadership within the European Institutions.
Being symbolical, the overtures of Chancellor Merkel towards Warsaw are not enough to make the relationship between Germany and Poland closer. On the one hand, the Polish government, totally controlled by the conservative Order and Justice party, does not accept Merkel's migration policy aimed at welcoming refugees from Syria and the South Mediterranean and redistributing them among all the member states of the European Union. On the other hand, Poland does not appreciate the position of the German government led by a coalition between Merkel's Christian democratic CDU party and social democratic SPD party in regards to Nordstream II, a pipeline conceived by Russian national energy major Gazprom and several German and European energy concerns to double the amount of gas that Russia carries to Germany throughout the seabed of the Baltic Sea.
According to the point of view of the German government, in particular of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel, who has tight relationship with Gazprom and Russian energy oligarchs, Nordstream II is a "purely economical project" aimed at increasing the amount of gas for the European market. On the contrary, the government of Poland, along with the governments of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, believe the Nordsteam II is a political project aimed at increasing the dependence of Europe on Russian gas supplies and bypassing the EU member states of Central Eastern Europe in order to increase Moscow's political influence.
The contrast regarding Nordstream II, that emerged during the meeting between Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Szydło, is tied to one more contrast that regards the European project. On the one hand, Chancellor Merkel, and SPD Gabriel in a stronger manner, do support an European Union led by a German-Franco axis and, more in general, by the countries of the Eurozone. Recently, several German and French politicians have been arguing the need to launch a "two gear Europe" with the "First League of Europe" made of EU member states from the West and the "Second League of Europe" made of countries of Central Eastern Europe.
From the perspective of the Polish political elites, the European Union should not only valorize the specific needs of its member states, but also guarantee pair opportunities and pair political representation to both Western and Central Eastern Europe. Moving into this direction, Polish President Andrzej Duda launched an informal group of EU member states, located between the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic, Black seas, that feel to be treated by Germany and France as the periphery of the European Union. This group of states, renamed the New Intermarium, was joined by Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary and Croatia. Some of these countries oppose the realization of Nordstream II.
The confirmation of Tusk as the President of European Council behind Merkel's visit to Kaczyński
In addition to the differences regarding energy policies and the political balance of power within the European Union, Germany and Poland are still unaligned due to the confirmation of Donald Tusk as the President of European Council.
Tusk, a former Polish Prime Minister and prominent representative of the Civic Platform, the main opposition party in Poland, is supported by Chancellor Merkel and almost all the heads of government and state of the European Union, except Poland. In fact, Poland's conservative ruling elites are keen on subordinating the national political rivalry between Tusk and the majority leader Jarosław Kaczyński to the need to provide Tusk, a popular politician in the European political environment, with a strong mandate necessary to lead one of the main European Institutions in a period of political crisis.
According to several rumors in Brussels, Chancellor Merkel might try to convince PM Szydło to support Tusk's confirmation by encouraging a bilateral meeting between Order and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to whom Mr. Kaczyński openly takes inspiration.
However, the plan by Merkel to convince Poland to endorse Tusk might be endangered by the decision of the outgoing French President, François Hollande, to run for President of European Council. Hollande, a socialist, might get support from left-wing European Governments such as Italy and Greece, breaking the unanimously support that Tusk is now enjoying in so doing.
Finally, another threat to the confirmation of Tusk is a likely candidacy of former Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstad: a liberal-democrat who might require Tusk's office in exchange to the support that the ALDE group has given to the European Popular Party -the Christian democratic European party to which belong both Merkel and Tusk- in order to elect Antonio Tajani the President of European Parliament.
Matteo Cazzulani
Strategy XXI
@MatteoCazzulani
