Poland has always occupied a special position for Irish people. Though the direct links are few enough, the fact of two predominantly Catholic nations, together forged on the anvil of suppression and division, has created a sense of togetherness that was in practice, perhaps, more apparent than real. The two-day State visit of the Polish President, Mr Aleksander Kwasniewski, is an opportunity to reflect on these historic and emotional ties. Both achieved independence at much the same time after many years of occupation; Poland's was compromised after the second World War and, few would disagree, this State only began to achieve real economic emancipation more than half a century after political separation, at much the same time as Poland was girding itself to break from the Soviet Union.
Too much should not normally be made of such parallels: the two countries are peripheral to the main body of Europe, but Poland, strategically and in sheer size, is a very different proposition from this Republic. Yet there is a complementarity as well. The Polish and the Irish economies are forging ahead at a time when much of western Europe is in the doldrums. Poland is driven by the same sense of innovation and development as we have seen here for the past decade and more. If religion and nationalism mean less in both countries than they did during the years when national identity was being maintained against all-comers, they are still realities that help to create a common bond, supplemented by a concrete desire for economic and social change.
Mr. Kwasniewski's visit is more pragmatic than symbolic, though inevitably a president's journeying does much to foster a sense of goodwill and friendship as well as providing a basis on which useful contacts for trade and commerce can be built. The current balance is very much in this State's favour. Irish businessmen and financiers have been quick to grasp the opportunities opening up in eastern Europe, particularly in the expanding Polish market. This is partly because, from the Polish point of view, old patterns of trade have not changed much: we buy their coal, but not much else because our suppliers elsewhere, particularly in the last decade, are already well established whereas Poland, having switched with remarkable speed from its old dependence on the Comecon countries, has undergone a sea change in almost all its trade relations.
In spite of considerable progress, economically and socially, Poland still has many problems, some of them not dissimilar to our own experience: a need for local industry to absorb workers displaced from agriculture, the transformation of outdated industry and, above all, perhaps, the need to address the basic problem of how to distribute new-found wealth equitably. Sean Lemass's "rising tide" has already helped to point the way to a solution, but the problems are great and the tide needs to be massive and sustained. Nothing suggests that Poland is not capable of the adjustment and the effort. Its forthcoming membership of NATO addresses both its strategic needs and its desire for full integration into western institutions. Admission to the European Union poses bigger problems, but probably more for the EU than for Poland itself.