ANDRZEJ DUDA, who took office as Poland’s president on August 6th, says he prizes Poland’s relationship with Germany. That marks a welcome change for his right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which is favoured to defeat the governing Civic Platform (PO) in the general election on October 25th.
PiS’s previous stint in power, in 2005-2007, was marred by paranoia at home and abroad, particularly the embarrassing anti-German antics of its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. This time Mr Kaczynski is lying low, leaving the spotlight to milder figures. Still, liberals and centrists worry that PiS could harm Polish-German relations and squander the country’s painstakingly accumulated credibility in Europe.
There is some cause for concern. In a recent interview with Rzeczpospolita, a daily, Mr Duda’s adviser on foreign affairs, Krzysztof Szczerski, haughtily set out four “conditions” that Germany must meet to preserve good relations. They included respecting the rights of Poles in Germany, letting Poland take part in the peace talks in Ukraine, dropping opposition to NATO bases in Poland, and relaxing EU climate policy to accommodate the country’s reliance on coal. Mr Szczerski harped on the need to be considered “equal partners”.
For Polish liberals, such talk revives the specter of the resentful religious nationalism that…
The Economist: Europe
