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CIAO DATE: 06/03
Foreign Policy
Would Jesus Join the EU?
On June 8, 2003, Poles will face one of their most important national decisions since the fall of communism: whether to join the European Union (EU). And in its crusade to win entry, the Polish government of ex-Communist Prime Minister Leszek Miller has found an unlikely ally: the Vatican.
The pro- and anti-EU camps are fighting fiercely for each vote. Three quarters of the voting population are expected to turn out in the referendum, whose outcome is uncertain. In March 2003, only 58 percent of Poles had declared their support for EU accession.
Enter the Roman Catholic Church. In a society that is 95 percent Catholic, a thumping 43 percent of those surveyed about the EU referendum said they would follow the church‘s lead. Problem is, the church is divided on the issue. The Vatican has supported Poland‘s entry, seeing it as an opportunity to extend the church‘s influence on social affairs in Europe. When Pope John Paul II traveled to Poland at the government‘s invitation last summer, he expressed his hope that his native land would “find its place in the structures of the European Union, and will not lose its identity but enrich the continent.” At the parochial level, however, local priests often deliver anti-European sermons blaming the West and the Internet for the secularization of Polish youth. “Globalization is the communism of the 21st century,” said right-wing commentator Andrzej Leszek Szczesniak, arguing against EU integration on Radio Maryja, an extreme-right Catholic station that reaches nearly 3 million Poles. And unfortunately for the government, the audience for such views is exactly the one that it most wants to win over for the referendum—rural voters who tend to be the most isolated and least educated.
Prime Minister Miller and Polish primate Jozef Glemp have worked hand in hand on the European question, following the endorsement in March 2002 by the Polish episcopate of plans for EU integration. But the political price of this partnership may be higher than anticipated. In December 2002, the government postponed its campaign promise to change Poland‘s restrictive antiabortion law. And in January 2003, it approached the EU for permission to preserve the laws on the “protection of human life” in the accession treaty. Still, no matter how the referendum goes, it has succeeded in yoking together a remarkably odd set of bedfellows: Ex-Communists working with Catholics to join what may be the ultimate secular democratic institution.