Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

A tale of loss and hope: what can we learn from Poland?

Maria Skóra 21st December 2021

Poland’s ruling nationalists aren’t having it all their own way. The opposition needs more external recognition.

liberal,progressive,opposition,PiS,Poland
Disproportionate: Kaczynski’s attempt to suppress all opposition has kindled citizen engagement (Grzegorz Zukowski / shutterstock.com)

Early this month, leading figures on the European populist right met in Warsaw. They had been invited by Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS).

The summit was attended—to name only the most prominent—by the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the leader of Spain’s Vox, Santiago Abascal, and Marine Le Pen, once more French presidential contender. The main objective was to strengthen co-operation among the fragmented right-wing groups in the European Parliament.

Kaczynski’s speech echoed this alternative vision of European collaboration. He vocally opposed a European Union based on liberal values and ‘political correctness’, as opposed to ‘traditional culture’. He suggested EU institutions infringed on the prerogatives of national sovereignty. For him, the EU should embody intergovernmental co-operation, without ‘interfering’ in domestic affairs—a limited arrangement recognising taken-for-granted national interests rather than a union cemented by universal norms.

Kaczynski’s summit had a clear strategic goal. He wants his legacy to be a Poland that leads a conservative European counter-revolution. ‘Lifting the country from its knees’ is a dramatic phrase often used to depict this claim to restore ‘Poland’s sovereignty’—drawing deeply on the constructed, national-popular, longue-durée narrative of victimhood and dismemberment at the hands of great European powers.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Model child

Before the election in October 2015, which saw the PiS oust the centre-right Civic Platform, Poland was seen in western Europe as a model child—a winner of the socio-economic transformation after the fall of the ‘iron curtain’, excelling in European integration. How much of the mooted success actually trickled down, in a neoliberal policy context, remains a topic of heated debate.

The disappointments, frustrations and fears of those who felt their social position rendered insecure were skillfully instrumentalised by the PiS to reach for power. It’s a pattern seen elsewhere, as with the Alternative für Deutschland in the old east-German Länder, or the Donald Trump phenomenon in post-industrial America.

The reconstruction of the state promised by the PiS took a dramatic turn. EU flags disappeared from the parliament, while revisionist rhetoric dominated foreign policy. The far right marched through Warsaw with official protection. The checks and balances of a democratic society—the judiciary and public-service media—fell prey to the governing party.

The opposition remains fragmented and, even if capable of uniting for elections, is so far too weak to prevail. Yet Polish democracy has not died.

Scapegoats and bogeymen

In recent years, many groups have been allocated the roles of scapegoats and bogeymen in the narrative of the PiS and its allies: doctors, for criticising an underfinanced healthcare system; teachers, for opposing the overhaul of education; judges, for resisting reconstruction of the judiciary.

Hostile rhetoric has been coupled with actions targeting women, minorities and foreigners: a ‘pro-life’ near-total ban on abortion, localities declared ‘LGBT-free zones’ and, latterly, migrants pushed back at the Belarusian border in the name of Islamophobic populism.

Mobilising voters using the politics of fear has had tangible consequences. Polish society has become deeply polarised: growing acceptance of the far right among young men is countered by young women identifying with left and liberal values.

The language used in public debate is brutal: amid deeply embedded nationalism, allegations fly as to who is a ‘traitor’. Smear campaigns are aimed at political opponents. One would have hoped that the assassination of the liberal mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, in January 2019 would have put a halt to this madness—sadly, not so.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Citizen engagement

Paradoxically, however, these grim developments have kindled citizen engagement. The attack on women’s rights, focused on abortion, has brought record numbers on to the streets. The dehumanising language around LBGT+ rights has sparked growing tolerance for same-sex relationships.

In solidarity with their persecuted colleagues, judges in courts across the country regularly hold pickets, disregarding the risk of reprisal. The disastrous mismanagement of the situation at the eastern border has resulted in many donations to voluntary organisations helping refugees in Poland. Finally, last weekend, protests broke out across the country, defending media freedom as a US-owned broadcaster had been repeatedly targeted by the government.

Even if politically the situation has not yet reached a critical mass for change, bitter remarks about Poles ‘not understanding democracy’ are unfair. Reports of the death of democracy in central and eastern Europe are greatly exaggerated.

Lessons to learn

Poland shows how easy it is to fall down the rabbit-hole of populism and nationalist demagogy. The trick is to learn from past failures to prepare for future battles—it was not the first and will not be the last country to face democratic backsliding.

The first lesson is for the EU the populists malign. Repeatedly raising awareness in the European Parliament is critical and must be matched by action by the European Commission to address these worrisome developments. We need more effective mechanisms to exert pressure on member states disrespecting fundamental values—before they finally violate them. Otherwise, the EU will implode under its own weight.

Secondly, the attempts by Eurosceptics and the far right to regroup and build capacity to sabotage Europe as we know it should ring alarm bells. There are enough success stories in Europe—as in Portugal, Sweden and now Germany—to challenge the pessimism and stagnation that feed populism. Transferring this know-how and making connections is all the more important for countries where the progressive, liberal forces are in retreat.

Thirdly, there is no case for resignation. Even if in some places the swing to the right is significant and long-lasting, it won’t be forever. Resistance should not go unnoticed. Keeping the morale of opposition high, sending signals of solidarity, is critical. Even if the 2019 election marathon in Poland was in the end won by the governing coalition, there will always be the next ballot—for example in 2022 in Hungary.

In Warsaw, Budapest or any other problematic capital in the future, defeat must never be accepted in the defence of our democracies. Through small victories, big wars are eventually won.

Maria Skóra
Maria Skóra

Maria Skóra is a research associate at the Institut für Europäische Politik and a policy fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, both think-tanks based in Berlin. She holds a masters in sociology and a PhD in economics.

You are here: Home / Politics / A tale of loss and hope: what can we learn from Poland?

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube