EU Membership and the Polish Party System

Abstract

It was only in 1989 with the recovery of full sovereignty and independence that Poland was able to relaunch its European aspirations. From the beginning two strategic goals were pursued — and ultimately achieved. Poland was different from most other countries in that joining NATO was much more of a strategic priority than EU membership. Entering the EU was a challenge that emerged in the mid-1990s, and in some ways interrupted the multiple process of political and economic transformation that characterized the process of post-communist transformation. It represented a new demanding task that could not be avoided, although this may seem a strange view of the beneficial act of joining a union of countries that has been in existence for several decades. The reason for such a deterministic view lies in the relative backwardness of Poland and the CEE countries as well as their geopolitical, and rather insecure, location. If one applies the two broad categories of fate and choice to this context, for most CEE countries EU accession fell far more into the category of fate rather than choice. This had particular implications for its impact on Poland’s party system.