Satisfaction mixed with caution, and the need to analyse carefully what it will mean to “enter Europe” with the admittedly better conditions obtained in the Copenhagen negotiations: that’s the mixed feelings in Poland (the largest of the 10 new countries joining the EU, with a population of 39 million, in large part peasant farmers, 18,4% unemployed) a few days after the baptism of the new 25-country Europe, signed in the capital of Denmark. Poland has, in effect, obtained a good deal more that what it might have expected to obtain under the terms of the initial guidelines of the Fifteen: the government request was to obtain an additional one billion euros for the two-year period 2004-5, to be added to the 457 billion already guaranteed for 2004. The solution, proposed by the Germans, was to grant Warsaw two tranches of 500 million euros each, subtracting them from the packet of structural funds of 8.6 billion euros already allocated. “Some perplexities and questions remain, however, in Poland says Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Siedlce . For instance, the transfer of resources destined initially to structural improvements, could in the long run prove penalizing. The more serious problem, from the point of view of the Christian community, is however that of safeguarding the spiritual values shared by the majority of the population. The fear is that pressure will be brought to bear to unify European thought around a liberal secular view of life. Though moral problems are not lacking adds bishop Kiernikowski , we still have a healthy Christian tradition in Poland. What people fear is being subjected to directives, such as those on abortion, euthanasia, secular schooling, that run counter to these ancient and salutary traditions”. L.C.
