JERZY BUZEK’S election as president of the European Parliament has been greeted as a vote of confidence in his native Poland.
Though the parliamentary position is largely a symbolic one, Mr Buzek’s appointment – 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain – is the nod of approval from the EU Poles have been waiting for since joining five years ago.
“The fact that we have such a symbol in the form of a Pole as head of the European Parliament gives Poland a greater opportunity and a stronger position in the EU,” said prime minister Donald Tusk, who nominated Mr Buzek, a member of his centre-right Civic Platform party.
Mr Buzek (69) comes from a well-known Polish family with a tradition of political involvement stretching back to the inter-war period of the last century.
Born in the western border region of Silesia, the trained chemical engineer was a prominent member of the Solidarity trade union movement that would eventually end communist rule in Poland.
He served as prime minister from 1997 to 2001 in a Solidarity alliance administration that led Poland into Nato and steered the country towards EU membership.
Despite major overhauls of local government, administration and the pension system, Mr Buzek’s government – the first post-communist administration to serve a full term – was swept from power on a wave of sleaze allegations.
Since becoming an MEP in 2004, Mr Buzek’s reputation has recovered considerably. An opinion poll of the most respected Poles last weekend showed him sharing the top spot with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.
Near the bottom of the poll was President Lech Kaczynski, who has crossed swords more than once in the past with Mr Buzek.
The two men are likely to clash again in the near future, given Mr Kaczynski’s decision to hold off signing Poland’s Lisbon Treaty ratification Bill until Ireland’s second vote. Analysts suggest it will be an instructive opportunity for Poles to see two very different approaches to politics in general, and Europe in particular.
As prime minister, Mr Buzek was criticised for his consensus-driven approach to power, a style he continued as MEP.
Mr Kaczynski has a more active, confrontational style in domestic and European affairs.
“Mr Buzek’s appointment will make it much more difficult for populist eurosceptics in Poland to make the claim that Poland is not treated as an equal,” said Dr Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw.
“This appointment will show that the way to achieve a level footing in Brussels is not the Kaczynski way of yelling at everybody and trying to intimidate them.
“More and more Poles will see that obstruction does not make Poland more important but less important.”
Mr Buzek’s new-found popularity at home was, he said, down to a “double standard of Polish public life”.
“Once it became known that Mr Buzek’s qualities are appreciated in Europe,” said Mr Kucharczyk, “people have started to appreciate them in Poland, too.”