`It was the misery of Poland that it could not have started rebuilding Europe with France and Germany in the 1940s." So says Mr Stanislaw Stebelski, director of European Union affairs in the Polish foreign ministry.
Most European wars have been fought either on the Franco-German border or on the German-Polish one, he continues. European integration, which has entrenched peace between France and Germany, can do the same now on that other border.
The Polish government is determined to ensure this opportunity to catch up with lost time is taken as it commences detailed negotiations for accession to the EU. As its opening statement put it: "Poland's sovereign decision on its participation in the process of European integration is intended to end finally the division of the continent, imposed against the will of the nations affected, and gives Poland the chance to make up at least partially for the losses suffered as a consequence of Yalta."
Having been partitioned among the Russian, Hapsburg and German empires from 1795-1918, Poland regained its independence briefly until 1939 when it was overwhelmed by Nazi Germany, suffering deaths from war and extermination of the Polish Jewish population amounting to six million people in the most unspeakable ways.
The war ended with Poland firmly in the Soviet sphere of influence, as a result of geopolitical decisions by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill taken over its head. It was not until 1989 that the country once more secured its independence.
Decisions to be made in the next five years concerning membership of NATO and the EU are seen by most Poles as an historic opportunity to lock themselves into the continent's new political, security and economic architecture. This would guarantee its independence probably for the next 100 years, this time in a more interdependent framework than the disastrous imperial and Cold War periods.
Standing in the middle of Warsaw's old town, rebuilt from the rubble of the Warsaw Uprising after the city was raised to the ground on Hitler's express orders, it is difficult to disagree that this is the heart of Europe, the title of Norman Davies's well-known history of Poland.
It is living up more and more to its geographical position in central Europe, as Berlin becomes the German capital and Russia suffers from profound political and economic instability. Both of these developments have driven the Polish political elite to opt for NATO and the EU.
EU membership is expected to consolidate the reforms embarked upon since 1989 - modernisation, democratisation, privatisation and marketisation, and to mitigate their social costs. The same applies in the other accession states, of which the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus are grouped with Poland in the first round of negotiations.
In the second layer are Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and possibly Malta. The position of Turkey is still unresolved in a third category, but in principle it has been accepted that it is entitled to join, albeit after a long delay of at least a generation.
This International Report on Poland is intended as the first in a series in this newspaper in coming months and years examining the accession states. As they negotiate it will be essential to know more about them, since their joining the EU will affect Irish interests and strategies in the Union.
There are many interesting parallels and points of contact between the two countries. There is a shared concern with national identity arising from partition and imperial rule and the struggles to reverse them. Poles are intrigued by how Ireland lost its language, for example.
Diplomats report considerable public and academic interest in the subject. There is also much discussion about Ireland as a model for Poland in terms of the affirmation of national identity in the EU through diversifying economic and political life away from Britain, and the effective use of structural funds to achieve a high growth rate.
Already there are substantial investments by Irish firms in Poland and a hefty trade gap in Ireland's favour, amounting in the first seven months of this year to exports from here to Poland of £104.1 million compared to £26.1 million imports. For the EU as a whole the latest figures show total trade of $43 billion, with a $10.5 billion balance in the EU's favour. Poland is now the EU's fourth largest trading partner after the US, Switzerland and Japan.
These opportunities for expanding activity in such a buoyant and lively market, growing at an average of 67 per cent in recent years, must be put alongside the fears in the farming sector or among Irish recipients of EU structural funds that enlargement to take in countries like Poland will undermine Irish interests.
Next week the Polish prime minister, Mr Jerzy Busek, visits Ireland to discuss EU accession and bilateral relations with the Taoiseach and other ministers.
He heads a coalition government consisting of the AWS/Solidarity grouping which brings together over 30 anti-communist political currents and the liberal UW/Freedom Union, strongly in favour of Europeanisation and market reforms. Although there have been some defections from the coalition, its majority is still intact and public support has held up in last month's local elections.
Its programme has concentrated on EU negotiations, local and regional government reform, and changes in the pensions, health and educational spheres. More privatisations of state companies, including telecommunications, mining and steelworks are planned. But these are difficult decisions with potentially grave social costs among groups of workers accustomed to a privileged position and with strong trade unions.
Agricultural reform looms over this, indeed over any Polish government, as a huge task. There are over two million farms, each averaging 7.9 hectares, less than half the European norm. Some 55 per cent of them are less than five hectares, producing only subsistence incomes. According to a recent European Commission report only about 300,000 farms of between 10 and 20 hectares can hope to survive profitably. But they do have high competitive potential on European markets if they are properly capitalised.
All these political issues bear strongly on Poland's EU negotiations, as is spelled out in the pages of this International Report. Its government faces a difficult task in co-ordinating policy amongst several different departments and leading figures. Failure to do so effectively has reduced some of the EU aid available under transitional programmes, a row which this year contributed to the beginning of a more realistic debate on Poland's position and interests in the EU.
Opinion polls show popular support reducing from 80 to about 60 per cent in favour of joining, compared to 20 per cent against and a 20 per cent don't know category which could well swing against. The new entrepreneurial and professional classes, young people, most trade unionists and urban dwellers are in favour of joining the EU. But most farmers are against, in fear of restructuring to come and an uncertain future, many of the nationalist right-wing are deeply sceptical, and while the Catholic Church's leadership is now in favour many priests and activists grouped around the evangelical right wing Radio Maryja are strongly against.
In these circumstances the Polish foreign minister, Mr Bronislaw Geremek, poses the question whether the elite consensus on joining the EU can hold over a long period of transition or if negotiations are held up in coming years by recalcitrant member-states arguing that their interests will be affected for the worse by this enlargement.
There is, as he says, a dramatic gap between public opinion in the EU and the reality of enlargement. Political elites in the member-states "are not able to explain the European idea and its strengths", he told an audience in Vienna, where there is much confused opposition to enlargement, based on a fear of migration and job losses. Free movement of labour tops the agenda for the Poles and the EU.
It shows up in opinion polls as the main preoccupation for younger Poles, but the German government is fearful of mass movements of labour. The Poles point out that it has not happened on such a large scale and that continuing growth underwritten by confidence about EU accession is the best guarantee against that. Similarly they resist pressure from Brussels to close off borders with Belarus and Ukraine by imposing visa regimes. They wish to preserve open communication and markets with their neighbours and say this is the best means of regulating migration.
The fear would be that too long a delay would see opposition grow in Poland and the other accession states. A referendum looks very likely to be held, but it is not constitutionally necessary; there is a question of whether it should be held now, to give a mandate for the negotiations, or when the package is complete.
The Polish government says it is making substantial progress on harmonising its legislation with the EU's acquis communautaire (although implementation is another matter) and that it will be ready to join in 2000, certainly by 2002. The calendar is very important, says Mr Stebelski of the foreign ministry.
Poland would be in a position to join economic and monetary union by 2006, he believes. Too long a delay would also raise fears about the emergence of two divisions in the EU and whether sufficient resources and commitment have been allocated to see convergence with EU living standards in the medium to long term (GDP per capita is currently about 40 per cent of the EU average).
LAST month in the main economics college in Warsaw the subject "Do you really want to join the EU?" was debated by a range of political figures before a packed audience of students.
The former head of the government's EU Integration Committee, Mr Ryszard Czarnecki, from a right-wing Catholic party, argued that to say Poland has to join is to admit the government is not really in a position to negotiate. There are advantages both ways. He insists that national culture and identity must be preserved. But he agreed it is not a question of whether to join, but when and on what conditions - it will affect every aspect of life.
A former economics minister from the opposition ex-communist party, the SLD, said the costs of not joining would outweigh the costs of accession. The costs would be severe in the short term, but would make for long term benefits. Agriculture and infrastructure would have to be transformed anyway and there is the prospect of doing it now with EU aid.
Accession would give Poland a voice in European security and political issues. But a member of the Catholic right-wing party questioned whether the cost argument stands up. Farmers are confused and apprehensive, he said.
So more realism is entering Poland's debate on the EU. This supplement looks sympathetically but critically at their approach to the EU, in the belief that we have much in common - much more so, probably, in the century to come than in this one.
