Change crucial to Poland's success

Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz negotiated Poland’s entry into NATO and the European Union as his country’s prime minister a decade ago. But he understands the backlash being felt today across Europe against the rapid expansion of the Brussels-based government.

“People across Europe are weary of change,” he told University of South Carolina students Tuesday in a series of discussions and an evening lecture. “Everything in my country has changed.”

Cimoszewicz is no stranger to USC. He has a son-in-law who graduated from the university, and he received an honorary degree in 1997 from USC Upstate.

On Tuesday, he shared what he saw as the obstacles to new alliances in Europe.

The peoples of Western Europe who started the Common Market following World War II now must digest the incorporation of former Soviet-era enemies into the growing European Union.

Making all the different cultures, nations and language groups of Europe comfortable with the rapid change is the greatest challenge to European integration, he said.

And more change is inevitable, he said. Europeans on both sides of the old Iron Curtain are accustomed to high levels of Social Security. But Poland, like much of Europe, is aging rapidly. The death rate is higher than the birth rate, causing a shrinking population. And social reforms will be essential to make the EU competitive with Asia and North America.

When Poland began the process to join the EU 13 years ago, he had to adopt 500 new laws, and train 60,000 technocrats to manage relations with the EU’s 200 committees.

“It is easy to make people afraid if they are not well informed,” he said. “They hear that the price of their drugs will go up, or that the country will lose sovereignty.”

But Cimoszewicz has no doubt that his decision to lead his country into the western alliance was the right path for Poland.

“A country that joins the EU is more respected internationally,” he said.

And his fellow citizens have benefited handsomely from that choice. In the first two years of EU membership, Polish farmers’ income doubled, he said.

In the next six years, Poland will receive an additional $67 billion in EU subsidies, rcemore than the nation’s annual budget. Combined with foreign private investment, he expects more than $200 billion to be invested.

“My country has never seen anything like this,” he said.

Source:By JAMES T. HAMMOND, www.thestate.com